ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 




E. BERESFQRD CHANCELLOR 






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THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME 

THE ANNALS OF THE STRAND. 

Illustrated. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net. 



THE HISTORY OF THE SQUARES OF LONDON. 
Illustrated. 4to. £,\, is. net. 

THE PRIVATE PALACES OF LONDON. 
Illustrated. 4to. £,\, is. net. 

KNIGHTSBRIDGE AND BELGRAVIA. 
Illustrated. 4to. £\ net. 

WANDERINGS IN PICCADILLY AND PALL MALL. 
Illustrated. Small 410. 2s. 6d. net. 

WALKS AMONG LONDON'S PICTURES. 
Small 8vo. 7s. 6d. net. 

LIVES OF THE BRITISH ARCHITECTS. 

Illustrated. 8vo. 5s. net. 

LIVES OF THE BRITISH SCULPTORS. 
Illustrated. 8vo. 12s. 6d, net. 

Etc. Etc. 



THE ANNALS OF 

FLEET STREET 

ITS TRADITIONS & ASSOCIATIONS 



BY 



E. BERESFORD CHANCELLOR 

M 
M.A., F.R.HIST.SOC. 



It was a delightful day : as we walked to St. Clement's 

Church, I again remarked that Fleet Street was the 

most cheerful scene in the world. " Fleet Street," said I, 

"is in my mind more delightful than Tempe." 

Jo/mson. "• Aye, sir." 

BOSWELL 



LONDON 
CHAPMAN & HALL LIMITED 

I 91 2 



i 



y%.^' 



r;-:7^> 



FOREWORD 

Fleet Street is a subject that cannot fail to have an 
interest for anyone who cares for the memories and 
associations with which the London thoroughfares 
in general, and this one in particular, are impreg- 
nated. The curious thing is that there has never 
before been a history of Fleet Street written ; the 
nearest attempt to such a work being the Memorials 
of Temple Bar, by T. C. Noble, a book of the greatest 
value, which, besides dealing with the famous Bar, 
has much to say about the street to which this struc- 
ture once formed the western entrance. With this 
exception, I do not know of any volume devoted 
to this large and fascinating subject, and therefore 
I hope no apology is needed for this further con- 
tribution to the great and ever-growing literature of 
London. 

Where one is needed, however, is for the sins of 
omission and commission in this book, which the 
reader will find out for himself, and about which, 
I feel sure, I am the last person he would expect to 
be more explicit. I have tried to record the annals 
of Fleet Street in such a way that those who pass 
through this historic thoroughfare may, if or when, 

V 



FOREWORD 

they have read this book, be attracted the more to it 
by calling to mind its past associations and by con- 
juring up the ghosts of those who have, through so 
many centuries, trodden its stones. 

I have not touched on the Fleet Prison for two 
reasons, which appear to be sufficiently cogent : one 
is that a book has been written specifically about it ; 
the other, that only by name can it be connected with 
Fleet Street, as it was situated on the easterly side 
of Farringdon Street (once the Fleet Ditch), which 
forms the limit, in that direction, of my wanderings. 

E. B. C. 

The Gladdy House, 
Wargrave, Berks. 



VI 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. FAGS 

I 



I. Fleet Street .... 

II. Streets South of Fleet Street . 

III. Streets North of Fleet Street . 

IV. Temple Bar and Some Bankers . 
V. The Inns of Court and Chancery 

VI. Churches of Fleet Street 

VII. The Taverns and Coffee-Houses of Fleet 
Street ..... 

VIII. Famous Men and Women of Fleet Street 

IX. Fleet Street and the Press 

Index ..... 



40 

71 

114 

145 
191 

239 

293 

oZ3 



Vll 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

/ 

Old Temple Bar ..... Frontispiece 
After T. H. Shepherd, from a Drawing dated 1620. 

KACINC PAGE 

Fleet Street, and Middle Temple Gate . . i '' 

After a Print by S. Ireland, 1800. 

The Burning of The Rumps, at Temple Bar . 
After Hogarth. 

Mrs. Salmon's Waxworks, South Side of Fleet Street . 
By Warren, from a Drawing by Schnebbelie, 1807. 

Mrs. Salmon's Waxworks, on North Side of Fleet 
Street ....... 

After J. T. Smith. 

Middle Temple Lane . . . . . 41 ' 

From a Drawing by Findley, 1855. 

View of Bridewell . . . . . 65 "^ 

From a Print by Sutton Nicholls, 1725. 

Dr. Johnson's House in Bolt Court . . . 79 ^ 

By S. Rawles, after G. Shepherd, 1810. 

House in Crane Court, occupied by the Royal Society 87 
After C. J. Smith, 1830. 

Old Houses on West Side of Fetter Lane 
After a Drawing by T. H. Shepherd, 1853. 



25 


y 


31 


/ 


zz 


/ 



93 



99 



Old Houses on West Side of Chancery Lane 
After a Drawing by T. H. Shepherd. 

& ix 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Rolls Chapel . . . . . 

After S. Ireland, 1800. 

Temple Bar, as Rebuilt by Wren 

By S. Rawles, after G. Shepherd, 1810. 

The Old Bulk Shop, Temple Bar 

From a Sketch by J- W. Archer, 1850. 

Child's Bank ..... 

From a Drawing by Findley, 1855. 

Hoare's Bank ..... 

After a Drawing by T. H. Shepherd, 1838. 

Clifford's Inn Hall .... 

From a Drawing by T. H. Shepherd, 1830. 

Old Serjeant's Inn Hall 

From a Contemporary Print. 

The Fountain in the Temple 

By Fletcher, after Nicholls, 1710. 

Old Middle Temple Hall 
After Hogarth, 1746, 

The Inner Temple Hall .... 
After S. Ireland, 1800. 

Hare Court, Temple .... 

From a Water-Colour Drawing dated 1830. 

The Temple, showing Paper Buildings 
After J. Maurer, 1741. 

St. Dunstan's Church .... 
From a Print by Malton, 1789. 

The Temple Church, with Cloisters and Old Build- 
ings in Front .... 

After Whichelo, 1794. 



page 
103 



IIS 



^33 



^37 



141 



145 ' 



151 



157 



161 



169 



177 



185 



191 



207 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING PAGE 



St. Bride's Church ..... 225 / 

By Wise, after G. Shepherd, 1814. 

The Black Lion Inn, Whitefriars . . . 239 -^ 

From a Water-Colour by T. H. Shepherd, 1859. 

The Bolt in Tun Inn ..... 289 

From a Water-Colour by T. H. Shepherd, 1859. 

Mock Procession of the Pope, November 17, 1679 . 293 /' 
From an old Print. 

Ancient House at the Corner of Chancery Lane . 301 
After J. T. Smith, 1789. 

Old Houses in Ship Yard, Shire Lane . . 307 "^ 

After Schnebbelie, 1815. 

Dr. Johnson's House, Inner Temple Lane . . 317 -^ 

From a Drawing by Findi.ev, 1855. 



XI 



THE 

ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

CHAPTER I 

FLEET STREET 

Fleet Street is, in a sense, the most famous thorough- 
fare in London. It was a street before the Strand as 
such came into existence ; for although it was extra 
muros, being divided from the City by Lud-gate, its 
proximity to the heart of things made it from very 
early days important both as a highway and, to some 
extent, as a place of residence. Of course, when the 
Romans occupied London, — or Augusta, as it was then 
termed, — the site of Fleet Street was little more than a 
rough road running through open country. Just out- 
side Lud-gate flowed the Fleet Stream or Ditch, as it 
was later to become and to be termed, and from this 
stream Fleet Street took its name, although at an earlier 
day it was generally known as Fleet Bridge Street, on 
account of the bridge which carried the roadway over 
the stream, and at an earlier date still as the Strond 
(because, obviously, it touched the banks of the Fleet) 
— a name later to be applied to that extension of the 
thoroughfare which we know by the name of the Strand. 
At various times remains have been found which help 
to rehabilitate these early days of Fleet Street's history, 
A 1 



\ THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

and among such relics was the stone pavement which 
Stow describes as having been discovered, near Chancery 
Lane, in 1595, only four feet from the surface of the 
ground, supported on piles, which may, perhaps, 
have been connected with that early burial-place of 
the Roman soldiers, who are said to have been interred 
in the Vallum (now Fleet Street), near the Praetorian 
camp at Ludgate. 

Such Roman remains were also discovered in the 
Strand, notably in the famous Roman Bath,i and 
some buffalo heads, and a stone coffin containing 
human ashes preserved in a glass vase, in the founda- 
tions of St. Martin's in the Fields. 

In this connection, the following remarks of Stow 
have a special interest, as what he observed no doubt 
dated from these early days : — 

" On this north side of Fleet Street, in the year of 
Christ 1595, I observed that when the labourers had 
broken up the pavement, from against Chancery Lane 
end up toward St. Dunstan's Church, and had digged 
four feet deep, they found one other pavement of hard 
stone, more sufficient than the first, and therefore 
harder to be broken, under which they found in the 
made ground piles of timber driven very thick, and 
almost close together, the same being as black as pitch 
or coal, and many of them rotten as earth, which 
proveth that the ground there, as sundry other places 
of the City, have been a marsh, or full of springs." 

Later relics have also been unearthed in this neigh- 
bourhood, notably the tall one-handled urn of the 
fourteenth century which was dug up opposite Bride 
Lane, Fleet Street, in 1856 ; and the stone bridge, 
dating from Edward iii.'s reign, found covered by 
rubbish, to the east of St. Clement's Danes, in 1802, 

^ See Annals of the Strand. 
2 



FLEET STREET 

which, it has been assumed, was the identical bridge built 
by the Templars, at the royal command, to facilitate 
traffic along the then marshy thoroughfare intercepted 
by streams flowing to the river. 

In process of time houses and shops began to arise 
along the once countrified road — a road which even in 
the year 1325 was described as " Fletestrete in the 
suburb of London " ; until in 1543, as may be seen by 
Wyngaerde's " View," it was relatively quite a thickly 
populated place boasting a number of important houses, 
several churches, and dignified by the presence of the 
Temple and its ample grounds. By that time, indeed, 
the whole area south of Fleet Street, lying between 
the Fleet Stream and Middle Temple Lane, was covered 
with buildings, the most important of which was the 
royal palace of Bridewell, whose south and east 
frontages, respectively, immediately overlooked the 
Thames and the Fleet Stream. Between its grounds 
and those of the Temple, the space was occupied by 
the Grey Friars ; so that, on the river side, these three 
important collocations of buildings alone filled up the 
long stretch of ground with which the present Fleet 
Street runs parallel. 

On the north of Fleet Street, however, the ground 
was far less thickly covered, and here the houses were 
chiefly confined to those lining the roadway, although 
Chancery Lane — which, by the bye, is called Chauncellers- 
lane in 1339 — is seen to be built over on each side, 
and even the outline of Lincoln's Inn Fields, which 
was then but an open space largely affected by beggars 
and those ' Feuters ' who gave their name to Fetter 
Lane, is indicated, together with the chapel of Lincoln's 
Inn founded by Gilbert de Fraxineto and his thirteen 
Black Friars in 1221. 

Fleet Street, under its earlier name of Fleet Bridge 

3 



THE ANNAI.S OF FLEET STREET i 

Street, is mentioned in 1228, when one Henry de Buke 
slew a certain Le Ireis le Tylor here, and fled to South- 
wark for sanctuary ; and it would appear that its 
present designation was not given it till the beginning 
of the fourteenth century, when (in 1311 ^) we come 
across a mention of it under the name of Fletestrete. 

Five years after this date, there is mention, in the 
Calendar of Post-Mortem Inquisitions, of a fine of 30s. 
levied on tenements in Fleet Street " which were of 
John de Evefelde," while in 1333, a " rent pertaining 
to Fleet " is referred to as arising from certain tene- 
ments of Roger Chauntelere by Sholane (Shoe Lane). 
A more interesting entry appears in the Calendar of 
Patent Rolls, under date of Oct. 17, 1265, where there 
is a " grant to John de Verdun, of those houses in the 
street of Flete late (the property) of John de Flete " ; 
which shows that the name had, so early as this, been 
appropriated as a family designation. 

Another early reference to property in Fleet Street 
occurs in the Patent Rolls, where, dated July 20, 1321, 
is the following " Pardon of the trespass of Hugh de 
Strubbi in bequething without licence of Edward i., 
to Sarra his wife for life all that tavern with eight 
shops standing round, which he had in the parish of 
St. Bride, Fletestrete, and that house with 2 shops 
which he inhabited there, and 8s. of quit rent receivable 
from the tenement of Stephen de Auverne, situated 
between the said Tavern on the east and the Flete river 
on the west " — this latter being evidently at the west 
end of what is now Ludgate Hill. 

In 1324 we find a grant by Parliament to the Prior 
of St. John of Jerusalem of two forges in Fleet Street. 
These forges were originally placed on either side of 

1 In this year five members of the royal household were arrested 
for burglary in Fleet Street. 

4, 



FLEET STREET 

St. Dunstan's Church, but at a later date, notably 
in 1381, they appear to have been destroyed by the 
followers of Wat Tyler. We learn by the Parliament 
Rolls ^ that in 1383 the then Prior prayed for a re- 
mission of the rent of 15s. which had been paid for 
these forges. It was not, however, till two years later 
that his petition was granted, and then only on con- 
dition that the ground on which they had stood should 
be thrown into the street, and the rent made good to 
the Exchequer by the Sheriffs of London. ^ 

Among the early references to Fleet Street, it is 
interesting to find a notice of some of the shopkeepers 
in Plantagenet times. Thus we read that one of them, 
in 1321, supplied Edward ii. with " Six pair of boots 
with tassels of silk and drops of silver gilt, price for 
each pair, 5s.," ^ and, skipping two centuries, that 
Catherine of Aragon dealt at a shop having the sign 
of ' The Coppe ' in the same thoroughfare. 

It may seem curious to many people that the juris- 
diction of the Lord Mayor and Corporation should 
have extended beyond the natural western boundaries 
of the City, at Ludgate, to Temple Bar ; especially as, 
by the Charter of King Edgar, all this neighbourhood, 
including " London Fen," and extending to what 
is now Farringdon Street and Bridge Street, was in- 
cluded in the bounds of the city of Westminster. But 
by a decree dated 1222, settling the long-standing 
dispute as to ecclesiastical franchise between the City 
and Westminster, the eastern boundary of the latter 
was placed at ' Ulebrig,' or Ivy Bridge, in the Strand, 
or where Cecil Street now runs. There thus remained 

^ Rot. Pari. vol. iii. p. 179 and vol. vi. p. 313. 

2 There is a record of another forge standing " in a corner without 
Ludgate " in 1436, for which a rent of gs. per annum was paid. 
^ ArchcBologia, vol. xxvi. p. 344. 

5 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

the large area covering part of the Strand and the 
whole of Fleet Street, unappropriated, or roughly 
that portion situated in the ward of Farringdon 
Without, for the parish of St. Clement's Danes was 
largely held by the Knights Templars, and the Savoy 
by the House of Lancaster. It is therefore supposed 
that the City must have received jurisdiction as far as 
Temple Bar when William i. granted it the Charter ; or 
if not, then later when Domesday Book was compiled. 
The fact, however, of subsequent disputes seems to 
prove that it held its power over this outlying portion 
of its domains on rather uncertain and questionable 
tenure, and it does not appear that its jurisdiction was 
regularly recognised till it was once for all defined 
under the Stuarts. 

Fleet Street is situated in the ward of Farringdon 
Without. This division was originally known as 
Ludgate and Newgate Ward, but in 1279 it was pur- 
chased from its then possessor, Ralph le Fevre, by 
William de Farendon, from whom it takes its present 
name. William de Farendon — or Farndone, as it is 
sometimes spelt — was a person of importance in his day, 
for besides being a goldsmith of repute, he was a member 
of Parliament, a Sheriff in 1281, and filled the office 
of Lord Mayor no fewer than three times. It was, 
according to Noble, either he or his son, Nicholas,^ who 
became the possessor of Fleet Street Ward, which had 
been hitherto held by Anketill de Auverne, and this 
was incorporated in Farringdon Ward. This large 
division comprised at that time the separate wards now 
known as those of Farringdon Within and Farringdon 
Without ; but even so early as 1393, the area had 

^ He was also Lord Mayor several times, and was the first holding 
that office who was returned as nlember of Parliament for the City. 
He died in 1361. 

6 



FLEET STREET 

become so important and thickly populated that it 
was then divided as it remains to-day. Noble gives 
a list of some of the more notable men who from time 
to time held the office of Alderman of Farringdon 
Without. Fabyan, famous for his Chronicles, was one 
of these ; Milbourne, whose almshouses preserve his 
name, another ; Judde, who founded the school at 
Tonbridge, yet another ; while Heywood, from whom 
springs the noble House of Bath ; Cockayne, the first 
Governor of the Irish Society ; Keeble of Aldermary ; 
Mico, who built the Stepney Almshouses ; and members 
of the great banking houses of Child, Hoare, Gosling, 
and Price, may be set down together with such famous 
names as those of Beckford (Richard, a relative of 
William), Wilkes, and, chiefly of local interest, Waith- 
man.^ 

It is interesting to know that Farringdon Ward 
Without returned six members to the Common Council 
from 1347, till 1639 when the number was raised to 
sixteen. In 1590 it subscribed £804, 10s. towards the 
subsidy raised for Queen Elizabeth, of which St. 
Dunstan's parish collected £264 and St. Bride's £136. 
No fewer than 1264 men, out of the 10,000 raised by 
the City of London at the time of the Armada scare, 
came from this ward. In 1742, Noble tells us, there 
were 4298 houses in it : 670 in St. Dunstan's ; 1052 in 
St. Bride's ; 210 in Whitefriars ; and 67 in Bridewell. 

It is difficult to trace the residence of important 
people other than the great ecclesiastics whose Inns 
were a prominent feature in Fleet Street, before the 

1 For much interesting information about this district, some of it 
not properly coming within my province liere, I would refer the reader 
to T. C. Noble's Memorials of Temple Bar, a small and unpretentious 
quarto, published in i86g, but containing far more authoritative data 
than is to be found in many more assuming works. 

7 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

sixteenth century, although it is probable that some of 
those mentioned above lived in it ; but at least one 
name has survived which is well known — that of 
Paston, whose family letters give us such a complete 
and vivid picture of life in the Middle Ages. The Sir 
John Paston of the fifteenth century had his town 
house in Fleet Street, and among the " Letters " are 
several references to it. Thus, under date of April 30, 
1472, Sir John writing to John Paston tells the latter 
that " Thys daye Robert of Racclyff weddyd the Lady 
Dymmok at my place in Fleetstreet " ; again, among 
a list of Sir John's Deeds is an entry referring to " a 
boxe with evydence off my place in Fletstrett " ; while 
we find John Paston addressing a letter to Sir John 
in 1469 " to my master, Sir John Paston in Flett 
Street " ; and finally, under date of July 29, 1465, we 
have, in connection with the famous lawsuit with 
which this family was for so long troubled : — 

" Responsiones personalites factse per Johannem 
Paston, in domo habitationis venerabilis mulieris 
Elisabethse Venor in le Flete vulgariter nuncupat 
infra parochiam Sanctge Brigidfic Virginis, in suburbeis 
civitatis London situata." 

On the other hand, several notices of less highly 
placed individuals of a later day have come down to us, 
simply because such persons were a nuisance to their 
neighbours, and have become enshrined in the records 
of ' presentations ' or inquisitions. One of these 
was a Mrs. Thimblethorpe, who was dwelling in Fleet 
Street in 1619, and was " much suspected by subtile 
meanes to be a troublesome woman, and of an ill dis- 
position amongst honest and quiet neighbours " ; not 
a very serious indictment, indeed, but one of which 
parochial authority had to take a mental note. Five 
years later a presentment appears against one James 
8 



FLEET STREET 

Walmsley and one William Summers, their misdoing 
consisting in " annoyinge of divers inhabitants in 
Fleet Street, and the white-fryers by killinge of dogges 
for hawkes, and also keepinge them long alyve howl- 
ing and cryinge, and after they have kil'd them, theyr 
blood and filthe groweth soe noysome that yt will be 
very dangerous for infection yf yt be suffered." In 
those days, when the plague broke out on the slightest 
provocation (the visitation of 1625 carried off in two 
months, from St. Dunstan's parish alone, no fewer than 
533 persons), it was wise to take precautions even against 
the careless disposal of offal. 

In my book on the Strand, I have alluded to the 
various efforts made for the better upkeep of that 
thoroughfare. Much which was then done west of 
Temple Bar was undoubtedly attended to east of that 
boundary ; and indeed we find, in 1540, statutes being 
passed ordering certain streets subsidiary to Fleet Street 
to be paved with stone, among them being Chancery 
Lane, Shoe Lane, and Fetter Lane ; and three years 
later these improvements were extended to Wych Street, 
Holywell Street, the Strand from Temple Bar to Strand 
Bridge, Water Lane, Butcher's Row, and Fleet Street 
itself. I imagine that this most important of all the 
thoroughfares had been originally better made, and that 
this was the reason why its improvement should post- 
date those carried on in its tributary streets. 

To our modern ideas, the thought that at the end 
of the sixteenth century London, in this then more or 
less outlying quarter, should have suffered from over- 
building, seems in the nature of the grotesque ; but 
so it was, for in 1580, on a representation from the 
Lord Mayor, a royal proclamation prohibited further 
building in London or its vicinity (Fleet Street and the 
Strand being thus indicated), and the reasons given 

9 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

for this injunction were the difficulty of governing so 
large a concourse of people ; fear of that ever-recurring 
curse — the plague ; and the supposed impossibility 
of providing so large a number of inhabitants with the 
means of sustenance. There must have been a sudden in- 
crease of building at this time, although Agas's "Plan" 
of 1560 shows few additions in the matter of houses to 
what is indicated in Wyngaerde's " Panoramic View " 
of seventeen years earlier ; nor does Norden, in his 
" Plan " of 1593, note such an increase as would seem to 
justify so drastic an order as that mentioned. When, 
however, we turn to Faithorne's " Map " of 1658, we find 
not only the ground on the south side of Fleet Street 
covered with houses,^ as well as the site of the Grey 
Friars and the grounds of Bridewell Palace built over 
(the palace being already used for alien purposes), but 
the whole of the north side of the thoroughfare, as far 
as Holborn, quite densely packed with tenements of all 
kinds and sizes ; and one wonders how far even a 
royal proclamation (for we know James i. issued one, 
if not more, of the same tenor as tha.t of Elizabeth) 
was capable of restraining the ever-increasing growth 
of a rich and prosperous city. 

When the Great Fire devastated London, it extended 
almost to St. Dunstan's Church, so that the west part 
of Fleet Street fell a victim to the flames. The rebuild- 
ing which then took place, although not, unfortunately, 
on the ample lines recommended by Wren, undoubtedly 
improved the thoroughfare ; but, at the same time, 
much that was picturesque, in the way of old gabled 

1 It was this sudden building mania that was aimed at in the MS. 
tract entitled " A Brief Discovery of the Great Purpresture of New 
Buildings nere to the Citie," in the time of James i., and led to the 
proclamation of 1622 prohibiting country gentlemen from staying in 
London except during term time and for other business, and forbade 
them bringing their wives and families with them I 
10 



FLEET STREET 

houses and other landmarks, disappeared. If we 
compare the plans of Faithorne and Ogilby (1677), 
we shall see that, besides rebuilding on systematic 
lines, the authorities set back the street just east of St. 
Dunstan's and made of Fleet Street a thoroughfare 
that was, for that period, wide and ample. Indeed, 
such as it was in the time of Charles ii., so it remained, 
as we can see by Rocque's " Plan " of 1741-45, till the 
middle of the eighteenth century ; and, except for re- 
building, and here and there the setting back of 
certain insignificant portions, such its outlines remain 
to the present day. The advent of the Law Courts 
and the formation of Ludgate Circus have, of course, 
greatly altered the appearance of its extreme limits ; 
while the removal of Temple Bar and the substitution 
of the ridiculous Griffin has taken from it its most 
picturesque landmark and added its most useless 
feature. 

From the Domestic State Papers I cull two re- 
ferences which show that even in the gay, careless 
times of Charles ii. such matters as street improve- 
ment were not treated with indifference : thus, under 
date of March 21, 1667, we find that " the Lord Mayor 
and officers, entrusted to order the new buildings in 
London, have taken av/ay from the site on which some 
of the houses in Fleet Street stood, as much (ground) 
as will make the part towards Ludgate as broad as the 
other part." If Wren's and Evelyn's splendid schemes 
could not be carried into effect, it is at least evident, 
by this extract, that the municipal authorities did 
what they could towards the betterment of this part 
of London. 

The other entry has reference to an early attempt 
to police the City during the time that the Great Fire 
was raging, for, under date of Sept. 3, 1666, we have a 

11 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

*' List of the 5 posts : viz. Temple Bar, Clifford's 
Inn Garden, Fetter Lane, Shoe Lane, and Cow Lane, 
at which constables of the respective parishes are 
ordered to attend, each with 100 men, during the 
fire of London. At every post are to be 30 foot 
with a good careful officer and 3 gentlemen who 
are to have power to give Is. to any who are diligent 
all night ; these men to be relieved from the country 
tomorrow ; five pounds in bread, cheese, and beer 
allowed to every post." 

At such a time as that during which the fire 
raged in London, and lawlessness was not easily kept 
within bounds, one can understand that such special 
measures as these were necessary ; but at an earlier 
day, even under normal conditions, the watchmen 
formed often but an indifferent means of preserving 
order, and there is a record of how three of them on one 
occasion were so roughly used as to be more or less 
permanently injured. This record is in the form of 
a Petition to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, of John 
Appleby, John Guppy, and Thomas Bond, who describe 
themselves as " three poor watchmen of the parish of 
St. Bride's, Fleet Street, and who, being called forth 
on Thursday night (April 1570) to aid the sheriffs in 
quieting a broil in Fleet Street, were all wounded, and 
are likely to be cripples for ever." They pray for relief 
for themselves and their families. 

I have mentioned the Great Fire as having destroyed 
the best part of Fleet Street. Indeed, little remained 
of the thoroughfare untouched by it. It was on the 
third day of the conflagration that Pepys saw the 
flames " running downe to Fleet Streete," and at five 
o'clock in the afternoon it had reached the Conduit 
which stood near Shoe Lane. On it came, until it 
gained the Temple on the south side, and within a few 
12 



FLEET STREET 

paces of St. Dunstan's on the north. The brick walls 
of the former proved sufficient to stop, practically, its 
further progress, and I suppose it providentially died 
out of its own accord at the third house from the 
church, for two old buildings dating from an earlier 
day, Nos. 184-185 Fleet Street, were remaining down to 
1869 as proof of their escape. An heroic attempt to 
stay it in Whitefriars was made by Lord Manchester and 
Lord Holies in ordering the destruction of a number of 
houses in that quarter ; but the wind was so strong 
that the flames could not be intercepted even by these 
drastic measures — measures which were, however, at- 
tended with better results in the precincts of the 
Temple, for when the fu-e was considered over, 
certain wooden houses by Paper Buildings were 
set alight by some sparks, and had not the Duke of 
York ordered the immediate blowing up of the ad- 
jacent premises, the whole of the Temple might have 
been destroyed. 

There was formerly an inscription on the Temple Ex- 
change Coffee-House, next to the Temple, indicating the 
spot at which the conflagration was finally extinguished. 

On the first outbreak of the fire, guards were ordered 
to be stationed at certain points, to prevent, if possible, 
the spread of the flames, and also to protect property, 
furniture, etc., brought out of the houses for safety. 
Noble, in his Memorials of Temple Bar, has collected 
certain interesting data concerning these posts, of 
which I avail myself here. Three documents are 
preserved in the Record Office bearing on this subject. 
The first of these is entitled " The several posts to bee 
attended by the severall constables, Sept. 3, 1666." 
There were five of these ' posts,' each consisting of thirty 
foot-soldiers and an officer, a constable and one hundred 
men, " one gentleman and to choose two more," and a 

13 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

superior officer was expected to visit the posts and see 
that all was in order. The rations allowed were " five 
pounds in bread and cheese and beere to every post ; 
the gentleman to have power to give a shillinge to whom 
he sees diligent att night." The posts within the area 
with Avhich I am dealing were stationed at Temple Bar 
and St. Dunstan's Church ; at Clifford's Inn Garden 
and Rolls Gardens up to Fetter Lane ; and from Fetter 
Lane to Shoe Lane. The second document is entitled 
" The posts assigned to bee attended in ye time of ye 
fire," by which we read that Lord Bellayes, Mr. 
Chicheley, and Mr. Hugh May,^ were the officers ap- 
pointed to the Temple Bar Post, who were ordered " to 
appoint sub-commissioners for distributing biscuit and 
cheese at ye Kinges cost to those that work." R shows 
the importance attached to this position that men like 
Chicheley, who was the Crown Surveyor, and Hugh May, 
who was the well-known architect and builder of the 
period, should have been appointed to look after it. 
At Clifford's Inn Post, Sir Charles Wheeler held a 
similar post. 

The third paper is endorsed " My Lord Oxford's 
Report upon his Rounde, Sept. 6. 166G, during ye 
time of ye fire." ^ By this interesting document we 
find that Lord Oxford, in going his rounds, observed 
some absentees from their respective posts : thus, 
although Mr. Chicheley was there, both Lord Bellayes 
(Bellasis) and Hugh May were absent from Temple Bar, 
and apparently there were no constables ; nor were any 
constables to be found at Clifford's Inn ; but to make up 
for this. Sir Charles Wheeler was at his post, together 
with Sir Godfrey Flood and Colonel Lovelace. But the 
supervision on the whole was satisfactory, and Lord 

1 Brother of Baptist May. 

2 For these, see Domestic State Papers. 

14 



FLEET STREET 

Oxford is able to report that " in all these places (he) 
found ye places where ye fire had bene well watcht 
with sentinells, and all care possible used by them yt 
were present." 

We all know that after the Great Fire steps were 
promptly taken to rebuild that portion of London 
which had been destroyed ; that Wren and Evelyn 
and others produced plans for the re-edification of the 
City ; and that Hollar and Sandford were ordered to 
make pictorial records of the ruins. Wren's " Plan " is 
specially interesting to us here, for had its ample lines 
been followed, Ave should have had a Fleet Street 90 feet 
wide, and the thoroughfare would have extended from 
Temple Bar to Tower Hill ! In the centre of Fleet 
Street was to have been a circus, from which eight 
subsidiary streets would have branched off. Such a 
splendid scheme, of course, never emerged from its 
initial stage ; but when rebuilding did take place 
in this thoroughfare (Sir Jonas Moore was one of the 
first to receive permission to do this), certain improve- 
ments as to uniform frontages were carried out : some 
premises being brought forward to the agreed building 
line, and others set back. By an Act of the Common 
Council, dated April 29, 1667, Fleet Street was ordered 
to be widened " from the place where the Greyhound 
Tavern stood to Ludgate," and instead of the previous 
32 and 23 feet, it was enlarged to a uniform width of 
45 feet. Certain houses were, as I have said, set back, 
notably those of Dr. Barebone, Richard Harriot, the 
Green Dragon Tavern, etc., and these left St. Dunstan's 
Church projecting into the roadway, as it may be seen 
to do in eighteenth-century prints. 

In 1670, when the streets were ordered to be 
properly paved, Fleet Street was the first to be attended 
to, and so much was then done to the thoroughfare in a 

15 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

variety of ways, that the Great Fire may almost be 
regarded as a blessing (as it certainly was in the matter 
of disinfection and general cleansing), notwithstanding 
the fact that in its course it swept out of existence so 
much that was picturesque and historic. 

I have mentioned certain disturbances which took 
place in Fleet Street at the time of the Great Fire, and 
doubtless at a time like that, when the guardianship 
of the peace was for a time relaxed, many and grave 
disorders took place. But it is a fact that from a much 
earlier period Fleet Street was noted for its broils. 
The presence in it of a large number of taverns had 
much to do with this state of affairs, and the then 
defective means of policing the streets made it an 
easy matter for the lawless to perpetrate their daring 
deeds, and then to hurry off to the safe asylum of 
the contiguous byways and alleys, or to seek shelter in 
the wilds of Whitefriars. 

In 1578, such incidents had become so frequent that, 
on April 27 of that year, the Lord Chief Justice and 
the Master of the Rolls were directed to take steps for 
repressing frays in the City ; " even in the face of their 
owne lodging in Fleete Street," adds the Council order 
significantly. 

In contemporary records we find plenty of in- 
stances proving the necessity for such steps. Here 
are two entries from Machyn's Diary : — 

1555. " The xxviij day of October in the mornyng 
was set up in Fletstrett, be-syd the well (St. Bride's 
Well), a payre of galaus, and ij men hangyd, for the 
robere of a Spaneard, (and they were) hangyng aganst 
the Spaneardes gate be-tyme in the mornyng, and so 
hangyng alle the day in the rayne." 

1559. " The xx day of Aprell ther was a grett fray 
in ... . be-twyn v and vj at nyght, betwyn servyng 



FLEET STREET 

men and .... Flett-strete ; ther was one ix bones taken 
out of ys . . . . and a-nodur had ye nosse cutt off." 

I could fill pages with similar extracts, taken from 
the Domestic State Papers and other sources, but they 
would only prove, what hardly requires proof, that in 
the spacious and turbulent times of the Tudors and 
their predecessors, life, in Fleet Street at any rate, 
had excitements that we wot not of. You might not 
incur the risk of being run down by a motor-bus or a 
taxi-cab, but you stood a very good chance of being 
dirked or clubbed if you were dissipated enough to 
be out of doors after, say, nine o'clock in the evening. 

The number of people who were ' presented ' 
for various offences was also large, as may be seen 
from the Parish Registers ; and Mr. Riley, in his 
Memorials of London, gives two very early and, as 
indicating rather curious surnames, interesting speci- 
mens. The first of these is dated 1311, and tells 
how one Dionsia le Bokebyndere presented a certain 
Welshman " for burglary in her house in Fletestrette in 
the suburbs of London " ; the second, dated 1337, 
informs us that Desiderate de Toryntone was taken, 
at the suit of John Baset, of Bydene, for a certain 
robbery committed upon him in the hostel of the 
Bishop of Sarum, in Fletestrette." 

As we have seen, retribution was dealt out to such 
as had broken the laws, in the actual place, or near it, 
where the offence was committed. Thus we read of 
various executions in Fleet Street ; and not only 
in early days, for in the seventeenth century and 
later the custom was continued. Luttrell, for instance, 
records how, on " the 17th Dec. (1684) one John 
Hutchins, who killed the waterman in Fleetstreet, 
was hang'd on a gibbet erected near the place, but 
he absolutely denied the fact to the last " ; and other 
B 17 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

instances could be cited from the Diarist, and con- 
temporary authorities. 

Nothing, perhaps, so markedly differentiates the 
Fleet Street of the past with that of to-day — not its 
altered appearance, not its new buildings — as the 
fact that it is now orderly where once it was disorderly, 
that it is now respectable where it was once the very 
reverse. 

If we wanted one word by which to distinguish 
the prevailing characteristic of the thoroughfare for 
the last hundred and fifty years, that word would, I 
suppose, be ' Journalism.' Indeed, it is to-day so largely 
identified with journalism that its name is alone 
sufficient to denote the ' Fifth Estate.' Nor is this 
connection inappropriate ; for we know that Wynkyn 
de Worde, the great printer, worked at the sign of 
the ' Falcon ' (now No. 32 Fleet Street), near Temple 
Bar (on the south side of the street), from which house 
Falcon Court takes its name ; and that Richard Tothill 
had his printing-offices where Nos. 7 and 8 Fleet Street 
stood, in the reign of Edward vi. ; while Gorboduc, 
the earliest English tragedy, was also " imprynted at 
London in Flete Strete, at the signe of the Faucon, 
by William Griffith," who sold copies of the book " at 
his shop in Saincte Dunstone's Churchyarde in the 
west of London," in 1565.^ 

I shall have something to say in another chapter 
concerning the publishers, booksellers, and printers, as 
well as about the great newspapers whose premises 
add so much to the interest and activity of Fleet 
Street ; but besides the Daily Telegraph, the Daily 
News, the Daily Chronicle, the Standard, Punch, etc., 
the London offices of innumerable provincial journals 
are scattered up and down the thoroughfare in be- 

1 London Past and Present, vol. ii. p. 30. 
18 



FLEET STREET 

wildering profusion ; all, apparently, drawn to this 
spot by some magnetic influence with which the place 
is saturated. The connection of Dr. Johnson with the 
street would be alone, perhaps, sufficient to account for 
this, but more likely is it that its position 'twixt East 
and West, as it were, is a better reason ; or the presence 
here, in the past, of innumerable taverns and coffee- 
houses, in those days the emporiums of news of all 
kinds, may have started the tradition which is now 
so firmly established as to seem permanent. 

These hostelries were at one time as great a feature 
of Fleet Street as are the newspaper offices of to-day. 
Here met all sorts and conditions of men to gossip, 
to read the news-sheets, to write letters or to indite 
dedications to lordly patrons ; just as to-day we 
may see people congregating in the offices of the 
Daily Telegraph or the Daily News, to scan the adver- 
tisements or to write letters to those whom Hope 
makes them believe will act as patrons, or at least 
relievers of their wants and necessities. 

Of these centres of literary, as well as of baccha- 
nalian, activity there has been practically no end. 
They were, and under more modern guises are, to be 
numbered as the sands of the sea. Some of them, 
like the celebrated ' Cheshire Cheese,' have preserved 
the external characteristics of an earlier day almost 
unaltered, and entering them from the rush and 
turmoil of Fleet Street, we seem to be thrown back 
into an earlier century when motors and taxi-cabs 
were not. In the chapter in which I deal with the 
taverns I shall endeavour to name as many 
as possible, and about a large number I hope to 
have some interesting facts and amusing gossip 
to record. 

Publishers have to-day flitted elsewhere, but in the 

19 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

eighteenth century, and even earher, many congre- 
gated here. For instance, Drayton's Poems were 
pubhshed, in 1608, " at the shop of John Smithwick, 
St. Dunstan's Churchyard, under the Diall " ; in 1653, 
The Compleat Angler was " sold by Richard Marriot 
in St. Dunstan's Churchyard, Fleet Street " ; Locke's 
Essay on the Human Understanding (the dedication 
of which was dated from Dorset Court — believed by 
Cunningham to be Dorset Court in Fleet Street) was 
also first printed by Eliz. Holt for Thomas Basset at 
the ' George ' in Fleet Street, near St. Dunstan's Church, 
in 1690 ; while an advertisement among the Domestic 
State Papers tells us that Ambrose Isted of Fleet 
Street had on sale a new play called " Charles viii. of 
France, written by Mr. Crowne about 1661, and acted 
at the Duke of York's Theatre." Later, Edmund Curll 
had his shop " at the sign of the Dial and Bible 
against St. Dunstan's Church " ; Jacob Robinson 
his, " on the west side of the gateway leading down 
the Liner Temple Lane " ; Lawton Gilliver, " at 
Homer's Head against St. Dunstan's Church " ; 
Mr. Copeland, " at the signe of the Rose Garland " ; 
Bernard Lintot at the ' Cross Keys,' next door to 
the celebrated ' Nando's ' ; and Tonson began his 
publishing business at a shop at the corner of Chancery 
Lane and Fleet Street ; while the well-known firm of 
legal publishers, Messrs. Butterworth, was established 
at No. 43 Fleet Street so early as 1780. 

The shop of Jacob Robinson has a particular 
interest for us. It bore the sign of the ' Pope's 
Head,' and was situated just inside the Inner Temple 
gateway ; and over the shop Burke came to lodge on 
his first arriving in London, in 1750, when he kept 
his terms at the Middle Temple. Robinson's shop 
adjoined the Rainbow Tavern, and was numbered 
20 



FLEET STREET 

16 Fleet Street, ^ being situated between the ancient 
hostelry and the famous No. 17 Fleet Street, much 
of which yet remains. 

If publishers have, for the most part, betaken 
themselves to other quarters of the town, several 
of the bankers whose establishments were once a 
feature of Fleet Street, still remain in their old quarters : 
for instance, Messrs. Child's Bank is to-day where 
it was originally established, " at the Marygold 
at No. 1 Fleet Street," in the time of Charles ii. ; 
Messrs. Hoare have been " at the Golden Bottle," 
now 37 Fleet Street, since 1693 ; and Messrs. Gosling 
" at [No. 19] the Three Squirrels, over against St. 
Dunstan's," from the seventeenth century. With 
Messrs. Coutts and Messrs. Twining in the Strand, 
these represent those private banks which were once 
such a feature of English commercial life. The Bank 
of England has one of its West End branches close 
by the Law Courts, and in Fleet Street will also be 
found one or two of the joint -stock banks which 
have been the product of later days of industrial 
enterprise. 

Although Fleet Street is, as a thoroughfare, older 
than the Strand, architecturally speaking it is, with 
the exception of the Temple buildings, of more recent 
growth ; for the Great Fire made such havoc with it 
that it had practically to be entirely rebuilt after that 
visitation. The consequence was that it did not 
exhibit, as did the Strand at a relatively recent date, 
those picturesque features or those buildings erected 
in most admired disorder, such as Butcher's Row and 
Holywell and Wych Streets, which at one time made 
it a byword as an artistic spectacle, and still more 
a byword as an exceedingly inconvenient highway. 
^ Hutton's Literary Landmarks of London. 

21 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

In one thing, however, it rivalled, as it still rivals, 
its sister street, and that is in its byways and alleys, 
many of which, in spite of rebuilding, seem still to 
retain the appearance, and certainly the odour, of 
an earlier day. Like the Strand, too, Fleet Street has 
its two churches : St. Dunstan's, and St. Bride's 
whose glorious steeple remains one of Wren's most 
exquisite achievements in this direction. 

No account of Fleet Street would be quite com- 
plete which failed to say something of the various 
' shows ' for which the thoroughfare has been noted 
time out of mind. Theatres in the ordinary accepta- 
tion of the word it has never had, and very few music- 
halls, although so early as 1670, John Banister, whom 
Pepys mentions as being violin to the King, at- 
tempted something of the sort, in Whitefriars, not 
without profit ; while, at a later date, there was in- 
augurated, in Bolt Court, a ' Dr. Johnson Music Hall ' 
which had very little success. 

Indeed, the shows of Fleet Street rather appealed 
to the eyes than the ears. The exhibition of monsters, 
contortionists, fire - eaters, waxworks, and moving 
pictures were more to the taste of the Fleet Street 
patrons than the concord of sweet sounds, or music 
married to immortal verse. Ben Jonson refers to 
" a new motion of the City of Nineveh, with Jonas 
and the whale," being exhibited at Fleet Bridge ; ^ 
and when he makes Knowell end a speech with the 
words, " here within this place is to be seen the true, 
rare, and accomplished monster, a miracle of nature," 
he is probably copying some such announcement 
seen by him, in front of one of the Fleet Street 
shows. 

The eighteenth century was, however, the heyday 
1 Every Man in his Humour. 
22 



FLEET STREET 

of such things. Nothing seemed then to come amiss 
to the curiosity of the pubhc. It was as happy 
in looking at the Giants striking the hours on St. 
Dunstan's clock as in inspecting a model of Amster- 
dam ' thirty feet long,' or in regaling its sight on a legless 
child, measuring but eighteen inches, who was to be 
seen at a grocer's in Shoe Lane, at the sign of the 
'Eagle and Child.' All kinds of wonderful and fearful 
animals attracted crowds, from a great Lincolnshire 
ox, nineteen hands high, to an old she-dromedary and 
her young one. 

The ' Duke of Marlborough's Head,' by Shoe Lane, 
seems to have been a great centre of attraction ; for 
here, at various times, were exhibited a " moving 
picture " ; " the great posture-master of Europe " who 
" extends his body into all deformed shapes " ; and a 
certain De Hightrehight who, besides eating burning 
coals, satisfied a curious appetite by sucking a red- 
hot poker five times a day. Automaton clocks, and 
giants and dwarfs, proved great ' draws ' ; indeed, 
Fleet Street was quite noted for the latter. For in- 
stance, we read of an Essex woman, named Gordon, 
who though not nineteen was seven feet high, and 
might be seen at the ' Rummer ' in Three Kings Court ; 
of an Italian giantess who was still taller, and had 
been inspected by ten reigning sovereigns (!) at the 
' Blew Boar and Green Tree ' ; of Edward Bamford, 
who died (1768) in Shire Lane, and who was seven 
feet four inches ; and of dwarfs : one of whom, a 
German named Buckinger, was only twenty-nine inches 
high, although, as he had no legs or hands, or any- 
thing, apparently, but body, the measurement does 
not go for much. He, however, could do so many 
things which the ordinary man is often unable to 
do, that he must have been worth seeing. Another 

23 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

pair of dwarfs, the so-called Black Prince and his 
wife (or princess), were three feet high, which is more 
understandable than a Turkey horse two feet high, 
which was exhibited with them. 

Mrs. Salmon's Waxworks were, of course, of 
perennial interest to the Fleet Street seekers after 
such mild forms of excitement, until they were sold 
in 1812 ; and another exhibition appears to have had 
an almost equal celebrity, namely, Rackstraw's 
Museum of Anatomy and Curiosities, which was to 
be seen at No. 197 Fleet Street, from 1736 to 1798, 
followed at a later date by Edward Donovan's 
Collection of Natural History — a venture which did not, 
however, prove a success. 

Other shows and exhibitions could, of course, be 
mentioned, many of them standing the test of years ; 
but most of an ephemeral nature, and calculated 
rather to attract the idle than to give any permanent 
source of satisfaction to the more sober-minded. 
They have passed, as have so many more sights of 
Fleet Street, into oblivion, and as the presence of 
many of them indicated the inherent child that lies 
hid in most of us, so their successive disappearances 
showed that delight in novelty and change which is no 
less characteristic of human nature. 

To such exhibitions ought, perhaps, to be added 
those political demonstrations of which the street 
had its full share : the Burning of the Rumps, of 
which Hogarth has left us such a spirited and excellent 
representation in his illustrations to Hudibras, and of 
which a contemporary says, " They made little gibbets, 
and roasted rumpes of mutton ; nay, I sawe some 
very good rumps of beefe," ^ and the health of King 
Charles ii. was drunk in the streets, some people doing 

1 Aubrey. 
24 




^ 



FLEET STREET 

it on their knees, and bonfires blazed when the ' Rump ■" 
ParHament was dissolved ; the Burning of the Pope, an 
annual celebration dating from Elizabeth's reign and 
the violent anti -popish feeling which then obtained, 
and repeated on every 17th November, the day of 
her birth. Luttrell and other writers have many 
references to this ' show,' and there is a well- 
known print of the one which took place in 1679, 
giving a good view of Temple Bar, St. Dunstan's 
Church, and the adjacent houses on the north of Fleet 
Street, 

The connection of the Green Ribbon Club with 
these celebrations has been mentioned elsewhere, as 
have also those Mug - House Riots, which if not 
exactly shows, were certainly exhibitions of a character 
which have happily passed with the century that 
witnessed them. 

In the earliest days of London's history, while 
yet the City was the comparatively exiguous Augusta 
of the Romans, its walls on the west extended no 
farther than the spot now known as Ludgate Circus. 
Just outside these walls, fonning a double barrier of 
defence, ran the Fleet Stream, whose course to the 
main river followed what is now Bridge Street, below 
which thoroughfare it still runs in the form of a great 
sewer. This stream in those days rushed through 
open country, and had its source among the hills of 
Hampstead and Highgate, but then a bridge carried 
the road which, passing through Lud-gate, became 
divided, its lower portion forming Watling Street, 
within the City walls. This road in its westerly direc- 
tion was at that time known as the Strond, being so 
termed in Agas's " Plan," published about 1560, but has 
for many years become famous as Fleet Street. In- 
deed, in the Liber Albus (1228) it is termed Fleet Bridge 

25 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Street, but in the fourteenth century it was known as 
Fletestrete, and was then regarded as being in the 
suburbs of London ! 

The Fleet Stream is here our eastern boundary, but 
as we are concerned with so small a portion of it, it 
will only be necessary to remark that the name has 
been derived from the Anglo-Saxon fleotan = to float, 
although the rapidity with which it fell into the Thames, 
might have led us to suppose that its name had some- 
thing in common with the present signification of 
the word. 

From very early days the stream was used for 
all kinds of purposes — from the turning of watermills 
to the reception of refuse and offal of every description. 
Indeed, so early as 1307, we find by the Calendar 
of Patent Rolls that commissioners were appointed 
to survey " the water course of Flete which is said to 
be obstructed and straitened by mud and filth being 
thrown into it, and by the new raising of a quay by 
the Mastern and Brethren of the New Temple for their 
mills on the Thames by Castle Baignard (Baynard) " ; 
and, in 1357, imprisonment was threatened against 
anyone who should throw rubbish into the river. 
But such periodical attention as was paid to the Fleet 
Stream, seems only to have been of temporary use, for so 
much later as 1585 we find the Privy Council directing 
(on March 7) the Surveyor of the Queen's Works 
" to survey the Fleet Ditch, and to report upon the 
best means for its purification and removing the 
nuisances there " ; while, later in the month, the 
matter having been considered, a proposal was made 
for erecting larger floodgates, so as to admit of a 
barge, 18 feet broad, up the stream.^ 

The stream seems to have been no better, not- 

^ Domestic State Papers. 
26 



FLEET STREET 

withstanding these efforts, in the seventeenth century ; 
for during the reign of James i. it was said to require 
" cleanninge sweetelye " and to be " lying very 
noisome, offensive, and infectious " ; and according to 
the Cotton MS. (Titus B. p. 268, quoted by Noble) it 
was determined that " neere unto Bridewell be placed 
a standinge grate of tymber, with two gates or dockes 
to the ende, that the same may be opened only when 
leighters shall be to passe in or out, and presentlie 
shut againe." Even down to the eighteenth century, 
however, the insanitary conditions of the ' Ditch ' 
were notorious, and have been depicted by Swift, Pope, 
Gay, and others ; but this was when, by various en- 
croachments, it had become lessened in extent and 
volume, for we are told by Strype that in the thir- 
teenth century it was " of such breadth and depth 
that ten or twelve ships at once, with merchandise, 
were wont to come to the Bridge of Fleet, and 
some of them ^ to Holborn Bridge." 

When the first bridge was built across the Fleet 
Stream is unknown, although it must have been during 
the time of the Roman occupation, but in Stow's 
time there was here, according to his own words, " a 
bridge of stone, fair coped on either side with iron 
pikes ; on which, towards the south, be also certain 
lanthorns of stone for lights to be placed in the winter 
evenings for commodity of travellers " ; and he adds : 
" It seemeth this last bridge to be made or repaired 
at the charges of John Wels, mayor, in the year 1431, 
for on the coping is engraven Wels ernbraced by 
angels like as on the standard in Cheape, which he 
also built." This bridge fell a victim to the Great 
Fire, but was replaced by a much wider one orna- 
mented with the arms of the City, etc., and extending 
^ Probably only barges. • 

27 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

to the breadth of the roadway. ^ In course of time, 
to be precise on Oct. 14, 1765, this second bridge 
was removed, and the stream was arched over, although 
one of the original walls was for a time allowed to 
remain, according to Dodsley, to prevent people from 
falling into the ditch on the Bridewell (south) side. 

Considering the close connection between journalism 
and Fleet Street that now, as it has for so long, obtains, 
it is interesting to remember that the Daily Courant, 
first published in 1702, and the earliest of London's 
daily papers, was printed for " E. Mallet against the 
Ditch at Fleet Bridge " ; while Stow tells us that 
the first knives ever made in England were manu- 
factured by Richard Matthews on Fleet Bridge, 
in 1563. This spot was, indeed, a kind of landmark 
in the City : in early days it was one of the places where 
toll was taken for commodities brought into London 
from the west, and it seems to have been selected as a 
good situation, not merely for ordinary business, but for 
those ' shows ' which in the eighteenth century par- 
ticularly were such a feature of London life. In 1700 
an Act was passed for the establishment of a market 
here, but nothing was done towards this end till 1737, 
when, on Sept. 30, a market was opened here, and 
remained till the building of Farringdon Market in 1829. 
To-day the Fleet runs beneath Bridge Street 
in the form of an immense sewer,^ and instead of 
a headlong stream there is to be seen there but a 

^ The cost of this from Nov. 1670 to June 1676 amounted to no 
less than ^^80,500 odd. Preserved in the Guildhall is a letter from 
Wren and Robert Hooke, dated Oct. 22, 1673, " Concerning the 
measure of the terrace work, performed upon the key of Fleet Ditch." 

^ It is 2657 feet long, 19 feet high, and at Blackfriars Bridge 
12 feet wide. It once inundated the Metropolitan Railway, and at 
Farringdon Road Station it runs over that line and another railway 
runs beneath it. 
28 



FLEET STREET 

conglomeration of traffic crossing it from Fleet 
Street to Ludgate Hill, or from Farringdon Street 
to Bridge Street ; but memorials of an earlier time 
still remain in the forms of the two obelisks, one 
of which, to John Wilkes, was erected in 1775 ; the 
other, to Alderman Waithman, who had his shop here, 
at the north-west end of Fleet Market, in 1833.^ 

Ludgate Circus, which now occupies the site of 
Fleet Bridge and its approaches, is a relatively modern 
improvement, having been begun in 1864, and com- 
pleted some eleven years later. It is one of those 
betterments by which much superficial open area was 
gained for the City, and if it cannot be regarded as 
particularly ample or dignified, it is at least more or 
less adequate to even the present requirements of 
traffic. 

Apart from the taverns, churches, and innumerable 
courts, alleys, and bystreets which are to be met with 
in Fleet Street, and to which I allocate special chapters, 
there are various landmarks which should be noticed 
hi a perambulation of this historic thoroughfare. 
Commencing at the west end and for the moment 
resisting the temptation to discuss the annals of 
Temple Bar or the Temple ^ itself, whose gateway, 
designed by Wren, is the first interesting feature we 
come to in the Fleet Street of to-day, our attention 
will be attracted by No. 17, situated nearly opposite 
Chancery Lane, over the gateway of the Inner 
Temple. 

This notable relic dates from the year 1610, 

^ J. T. Smith, in his Vagabondiana, tells of a crossing-sweeper, a 
native of Jamaica, named Charles McGee, who did so well that he sold 
his crossing for ;^iooo. His portrait (taken at the age of seventy- 
two, in 1815) used to hang in the ' Twelve Bells,' a tavern in Bride 
Lane. He left Miss Waithman, who had befriended him, ;^7ooo. 

2 These are dealt with in Chapters IV. and V. 

29 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

although I do not know that there is any good ground 
for attributing it to Inigo Jones as Noble does, unless 
the fact that that great architect was Surveyor to the 
Crown at this time and that the house was Crown 
property can be said to give foundation for the sup- 
position. There seems little doubt that it was cer- 
tainly used, in the reign of James i., as the office and 
Council Chamber of the Duchy of Cornwall, and as 
" the Prince's Council Chamber " we find frequent 
mention of it in the Domestic State Papers and in 
other contemporary records, the earliest reference to 
it in this capacity being dated 1617. But it would 
seem that it must have had some connection with the 
Duchy of Cornwall, or at any rate with the Prince of 
Wales, before this, as the finely panelled room, with 
its beautiful plastered ceiling, exhibits the device of 
Henry, Prince of Wales, whose feathers and cipher 
"P. H." are to be seen in it. Now Henry, Prince of 
Wales, died in 1612, and there are no records extant 
of the house being used for the purpose stated, till 
five years after that event, so that it would seem as if 
the place was rather occupied by that ill-fated Prince 
either as a lodging or for some other purpose. The 
office of the Duchy of Cornwall was, as a matter of 
fact, situated at various times in different places, and 
once, at least, warrants were issued by it from premises 
in Salisbury Court ; while the following entry in the 
State Papers does not necessarily prove that the 
house mentioned was No. 17 : " Our pleasure is that 
those of our subjects who seek to have defective titles 
made good shall, before Hilary term next, repair to our 
new Commissioners at a house in Fleet Street, where 
our Commissioners for our Revenue while we were 
Prince of Wales did annually meet " (1635). On the 
other hand, this house may have been identical with 
30 




'£Bbb SiiSS S555I' 

J^ IdB^ ;^is| III 



FLEET STREET 

the one under consideration, and have been the same 
as the " Prince's Court of Wards " mentioned in a 
letter addressed to Mrs. Nicholls on May 1, 1620. 

Some light seems to be thrown on the subject by 
the suggestion that the premises were erected by one 
John Bennett, on the site of a previous house owned 
by him, and bearing the sign of the ' Prince's Arms.' 
Bennett may have decorated his property to suit its 
name, and the fact that the Duchy of Cornwall office 
once occupied it may be merely fortuitous. Indeed, 
had this office owned the place, it seems more than 
likely that on Prince Henry's death, and the consequent 
creation of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales, the 
cipher of the latter would have been substituted for 
the " P. H." which still remains. 

At a subsequent period Mrs. Salmon had her famous 
exhibition of waxworks here, and in her day the 
legend on the house ran : " Formerly the palace of 
Henry, Prince of Wales, son of James 1st." The 
word ' palace ' in this connection, whatever the 
Prince's connection with the place was, protests too 
much ; but it was hardly so daring a speculation as 
was that of a later tenant, who, regardless of historic 
accuracy, calmly put up a notice in front of the house, 
which read : " Formerly the palace of Henry viii. and 
Cardinal Wolsey." One wonders if this worthy had 
heard of the story of Wolsey and Sir James Paulet, 
when the former was tutor to Lord Dorset's children. 
He in some way annoyed Paulet, who caused him to 
be put in the stocks. Wolsey in after years, mindful 
of the insult, sent for Paulet and ordered him not to 
leave London without his permission. Paulet did, in 
fact, for some five or six years, reside in the gatehouse 
of the Middle Temple, during which time, according 
to Stow, he re-edified it, and with the hopes of appeasing 

31 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Wolsey, set over the front the Cardinal's hat and arms. 
This, however, was the gatehouse of the Middle, not 
the Inner, Temple, and it was adjoining the latter that 
No. 17 was, and is, situated. Mr. Philip Norman 
remarks concerning the Inner Temple gateway, that 
" from the first it was a freehold of the parish of St. 
Dunstan, in the west. At the same time, owing to the 
fact that it stood over the Inner Temple Lane and 
extended for some distance along its east side, the 
authorities of the Inner Temple had certain rights over 
it. Unfortunately, no early deeds of this house are 
forthcoming. Nor can much allusion to it be found 
until the eighteenth century. Long before this, 
however, there was a shop here, apparently forming 
part of the structure. Proof of its existence is found 
in the title - page of Thomas Middleton's comedy, 
A Mad World, my Masters, a second edition of which, 
published in 1640, was ' to be sold by James Becket at 
his shop in the Inner Temple Gate.'" ^ 

I have referred to Mrs. Salmon's waxworks as 
being exhibited here. This show was originally 
situated in Aldersgate, and later was moved to a 
house " near the Horn Tavern " ^ (now Anderton's 
Hotel), where Mrs. Salmon, who had herself con- 
structed the figures, died at the ripe age of ninety, 
in March 1760. After her death the collection was 
purchased by a surgeon of Chancery Lane, named 
Clark or Clarke, who continued to exhibit them, as 
did his widow. In 1788, the figures were moved to 
189 Fleet Street, later Praed's Bank ; and in 1795, 
when this house was demolished, Mrs. Clark took 

1 London Vanished and Vanishing. 

- The house bore the sign of a ' Salmon,' and is referred to in 
Nos. 28 and 31 of the Spectator. J . T. Smith engraved a representation 
of it. 
32 




%^ Tft 


m3 


^^f 


'U-^% 


^Tf 


^.*» 


■s.-^-^ 




MRS. SALMON S WAXWORKS, NORTH SIDE OK Fl.KKT STKEKT. 

7'i> face f>'tgt 



FLEET STREET 

No. 17, then known by its old name of the Fountain 
Tavern. Mr. Norman thinks, with good reason, that 
during this time the Waxworks occupied only a part 
of the house and the Tavern the other portion. Later 
a Mr. Reed occupied the place, and still later Mr. 
Carter whose hairdressing establishment was situated 
here for upwards of seventy years. ^ 

Farther east is No. 53 Fleet Street, an interesting 
site, for here Overton at the ' Golden Buck ' ^ sold 
his prints, Hogarth's among them, an undertaking 
specifically referred to by Gay in his Trivia. 

Three doors farther on was another print-shop, where 
the notorious William Hone began, in 1812, to publish 
his pamphlets and bills, which caused " divers great 
numbers of persons to assemble and come together in 
front of his shop," and which, as he was not a freeman, 
landed him in the Law Courts. 

The equally notorious Richard Carlile lived, in 
1828, at No. 62, and here opened his " Lecturing, 
conversation, and discussion establishment " ; and 
a few doors farther east (at No. 67) once resided and 
had his shop, Thomas Tompion, the seventeenth- 
century watch and clock maker who attempted to 
make a clock for St. Paul's which should go for a 
hundred years without being wound. Thomas Mudge 
succeeded him at the ' Dial and One Crown ' opposite 
the Bolt-in-Tun Tavern. Mudge took into partnership 
one Button, and this firm made a watch for Dr. Johnson 
— the first he ever possessed, it is said. No. 67 Fleet 

^ There is a view of Mrs. Salmon's Waxworks, when on the north 
side of Fleet Street, in the Grace Collection. 

2 On a glass picture of George iii. is the inscription : " Printed for 
Robt. Sa^^er at the Golden Buck, near Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street." 
The Gentleman' s Pocket Companion was printed and sold by Thomas 
Taylor " at the Golden Lyon, over against Serjeants' Inn, in Fleet 
Street," in 1722. 

c 33 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Street was modernised, Noble tells us, in 1850, and 
was the last to fall a victim to the ' re-edifier.' At 
No. 98 lived the silversmith Joseph Brasbridge, who 
occupied his leisure by writing, and produced his 
Fruits of Experience, which formed an autobiography 
of its author. 

Before returning on the other side of the street, I 
may incidentally mention that Robert Mylne, who built 
Blackfriars Bridge (begun in 1760 and finished in 1769), 
lived in a house he designed for himself, in 1780, in 
New Bridge Street, afterwards the York Hotel, and 
later demolished to make room for the railway station ; 
and that at No. 6 once lived Sir Richard Phillips, the 
well-known bookseller and author of that " Walk to 
Kew, "m/t'r alia, which is still to be met with, and is 
not without value. 

The chief interest on the north side of Fleet Street 
lies in its courts and alleys, about Avhich I shall have 
something to say in a subsequent chapter. There 
are, however, one or two sites which deserve mention, 
for one reason or another. The first of these to which 
we com-C is No. 106, for it was here, at the sign of the 
' Red Lion,' that John Hardham sold his famous 
' No. 37 ' snuff, by which he had accumulated at his 
death, in 1772, no less than £22,000. Hardham, who 
was a friend of Garrick, to whom he left £5, — ^the rest 
of his fortune going to his native town of Chichester, 
— lies buried in St. Bride's. " His little back parlour," at 
106 Fleet Street, " characteristically enough, was hung 
around with portraits of eminent performers, to whose 
styles of dramatic action and manner he could fre- 
quently refer in the course of his instructions to novices 
for the stage." He was ' numberer ' to Garrick at 
Drury Lane, i.e. one who counted the audience as a 
check on those who took the money at the doors. 
84 



FLEET STREET 

At No. 138, the mathematical instrument makers 
first began their business in 1782, and at No. 161 was 
the shop of that bootmaker. Hardy, who was impHcated 
with Home Tooke ; while next door (No. 162), Richard 
Carlile, the free-thinker, whom we have before met at 
No. 62, on the opposite side of the street, was wont to 
suspend the effigy of a bishop in front of his shop ! 
Close by, between Bolt Court and Johnson's Court, 
Christopher Pinchbeck, who invented the metal known 
by his name, lived at the sign of the ' Astronomico- 
Musical Clock,' and v/as buried, in 1732, in St. Dunstan's. 

Noble, to whom I am largely indebted for many 
of the interesting data concerning former residents in 
Fleet Street, thus speaks of Nos. 190 and 192. These 
two houses, says he, " have a somewhat curious history. 
Upon the site of No. 192 was born, it is said, Abraham 
Cowley, the poet, whose father was a grocer. In 1740 
it was tenanted by a grocer, where the finest Caper 
tea was sold for 24s. ; Fine Green, 18s. ; Hyson, 16s. ; 
Bohea, 7s. ; all warranted genuine ! In 1787 the 
firm was ' North, Hoare, Nanson, and Simpson, grocers, 
at the " Black Moor's Head." ' Soon after. North 
retired, but being refused re-admittance into the old 
firm, opened an opposition shop at No. 190. Such 
was the celebrity of this old gentleman, that the trade 
of the old concern left it, and came to North's new 
shop ; upon which the partners joined him, and the 
famous old house at the corner ceased to exist." " The 
grocery firm," adds Noble (in 1869), " still flourishes at 
No. 190." 

There remained till the closing years of the 
eighteenth century a fine old half-timbered house at 
the west corner of Chancery Lane, of which J. T. 
Smith made a drawing ^ in 1789 ; this house was once 

^ In the Grace Collection. 

35 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

the shop of Izaak Walton, who held it from 1627 to 
1634, when he removed to one which appears to have 
been on the site of No. 120 Chancery Lane. 

Before dealing with the streets and courts which 
were entered from Fleet Street, it will be interesting 
to say a word about the old signs which at an earlier 
day made the main thoroughfare so picturesque. 
The largest of these signboards was that hanging 
before the Castle Tavern ; indeed, it is said to have 
been the biggest in London at the time. Signs are 
now only associated with public-houses, but in earlier 
days, before the numbering of houses and shops, the 
latter were distinguished by such indications ; the 
former being generally known by their proximity to 
some particular sign. 

Not long ago there was an attempt made in Lom- 
bard Street to resuscitate this manner of marking 
the various banks, and, from the effect then produced, 
one can easily imagine what Fleet Street must have 
looked like when practically every place had a sign, 
if not two. The authorities, for various excellent 
reasons, do not allow such things to obscure light 
and air to-day ; but in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries a greater licence was permitted, with the 
result that the signs, to use Sorbiere's ^ words, " almost 
obscured the sun," and filled the streets with " Blue 
Boars, Black Swans and Red Lions, not to mention 
Flying Pigs and Hogs in Armour, with many crea- 
tures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of 
Africa." ^ 

The presence of signs in Fleet Street was not with- 
out its disadvantages, for, not to mention the freak of 
Denham and his friends, who one night painted them 
all black, they occasionally fell, causing not only 

1 A Journey to England in 1664. ^ The Spectator. 

86 



FLEET STREET 

destruction to property but loss of life, as occurred 
in 1718 with a signboard opposite Bride Lane, which 
brought down the brick-work of the house to which 
it was attached about the heads of the people in 
the street, four of whom were killed. In 1761 an Act 
was passed making it compulsory to set the boards 
flat against the premises, which accounts for that at 
the ' Devil ' being reset in this fashion.^ 

Noble tells us that, in 1630, " the sign of the Crown 
hanging in the street " is mentioned specifically among 
the fixtures of the Crown Tavern, in Shoe Lane, thus 
proving that such things were regarded as of value. 
We know that in recent times signboards have been 
painted by such men as Morland, Ward, Leslie, and 
other famous artists ; and, naturally, to such works 
value is attached. The majority of Fleet Street signs, 
however, were executed in Harp or Harper's Alley, 
leading out of Shoe Lane, and Hotten tells us that 
one Van der Trout was the earliest of the signboard 
artists to settle in this spot, which soon became noted 
for such things. 2 

Another method of advertising their businesses was 
employed by innkeepers and tradesmen in the circula- 
tion of tokens. I have mentioned some of those 
which were issued from Fleet Street and the Strand, 
and in such works as Boyne's Tokens, and Burn's and 
Akerman's books on the same subject, more or less 
complete lists are given. 

An object of interest which once occupied a 
prominent position in the centre of Fleet Street was 
The Conduit, near Shoe Lane. This conduit not 

1 See Chapter VII. 

2 A unique sign was that of the ' Three Squirrels,' set up by Messrs. 
Goshng, the bankers, and still preserved. It was made of soUd silver, 
with the device painted in colours upon it. 

37 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

only supplied water to this end of the thoroughfare, 
but formed a feature in most of those pageants which, 
from mediaeval times to the days of the Stuarts, were 
such picturesque additions to London's gaiety. When 
Anne Bullen went from the Tower to be crowned at 
Westminster, the Conduit poured forth wine instead 
of water, and was decorated and surmounted with 
angels ; when Philip of Spain came to England to 
wed Queen Mary, a pageant took place at the Conduit ; 
while it was pressed into a like service when Elizabeth 
passed through Fleet Street on her accession in 1558. 

The Conduit is frequently mentioned, in contem- 
porary records, not only in such august connections, 
but also as a landmark, and as a spot w^here civic 
proclamations were ordered to be exhibited. It 
appears to have begun to be re-edified by Sir William 
Eastfield, Lord Mayor, in 1439, and finished, as the 
result of certain directions left by Sir William to his 
executors, in 1471 ; but it dated from a much earlier 
period, as, in 1388, the residents in Fleet Street were 
empowered by the civic authorities to erect a penthouse 
as a protection over the pipes of the Conduit, then 
described as being " opposite to the house and tavern 
of John W^al worth, vintner," in order to obviate the 
damage caused by the overflowing of the Conduit, 
" which," we are told, " frequently, through the 
breaking of the pipes thereof, rotted and damaged 
their houses and cellars, and the party walls thereof, 
as also their goods and wares, by the overflow there- 
from." 1 

Stow describes the Conduit as consisting of a 
stone tower, decorated with images of St. Christopher 
on the top, and angels round about, lower down, with 
sweet -sounding bells, which bells, by an engine placed 

1 Riley, Memorials of London. 
38 



FLEET STREET 

in the tower, every hour " with hammers chymned 
such an hymne as was appointed." 

In 1478, the inhabitants of Fleet Street obtained 
a licence to make at their own expense two cisterns, 
one of which was to be erected at this conduit or 
' Standard,' as it was termed, and the other at Fleet 
Bridge. And a record, dated the same year, tells us 
how " a wex chandler in Flete Street, had bi crafte 
perced a pipe of the condit withynne the grounde 
and so conveied the water into his selar ; wherefore 
he was judged to ride through the citee with a con- 
dit uppon his hedde." The man's name, it appears, 
was Campion, and the " condit on his hedde " was a 
small model of the building. In 1582, the Conduit 
was again rebuilt, and a larger cistern placed by it ; 
but Sir Hugh Middleton's great New River scheme, 
inaugurated in 1618, obviated the further necessity of 
the Conduit, which was probably taken down about 
this period or soon after. 

In the Plan of London issued by Ryther of 
Amsterdam in 1604, we get an excellent view of the 
Conduit, which was a building of considerable size 
and importance. 



39 



CHAPTER II 

STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

Starting from the spot where Temple Bar once stood, 
and proceeding eastward, the first tributary from the 
main stream to which we come is the tiny Child's 
Place, which dates from about 1787, when the Devil 
Tavern was demolished, and Messrs. Child's Bank, to- 
gether with this small court, formed on its site. A few 
steps farther bring us to Middle Temple Lane and Inner 
Temple Lane (called by Horwood, in 1799, Little Temple 
Lane). Apart from the fact that the former is part 
and parcel of the Middle Temple, and therefore has a 
natural claim to be remembered, there is not any great 
wealth of association with this narrow alley. It once, 
however, had a notable resident in the person of Elias 
Ashmole, the antiquary and historian of the Order of 
the Garter. A terrible calamity occurred to him here, 
for on Jan. 26, 1679, a fire broke out in the adjoining 
chambers, and spread with such rapidity to those 
occupied by Ashmole, that practically the whole of his 
books, the accumulation of over thirty years, together 
with a fine cabinet of coins, seals, charters, and anti- 
quities of all sorts, fell victims to the flames. Luckily, 
his collection of manuscripts was at another house 
owned by Ashmole, at Lambeth, and so has come 
down to us, preserved now in the British Museum. 

Inner Temple Lane, on the other hand, is full 
40 




'■/X 




^0 



A^. 



* i 




rr Uf I 



1 .- 



MIDDLE TliMl'LE DANE. 



To /ace page 4 1 . 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

of fascinating associations : here Johnson had one of his 
many Fleet Street abodes ; here Boswell also once 
lodged ; Cowper was here in 1752, and Lamb in 1809 
to 1817 ; while Lord Chief -Justice Campbell resided at 
No. 5 during the year 1804, and in a shop in the lane 
the first barometers ever seen in London were sold by 
an optician named Jones. Much rebuilding has, to some 
extent, taken from the lane's picturesque appearance, 
and with these ' improvements ' the one-time homes 
of Johnson, Boswell, and Lamb have disappeared ; 
but no one passing up or down it should forget that 
here the most potent literary figure of the day once 
lived, and the kindliest and gentlest of men and most 
consummate of essayists. Johnson's rooms were at 
No. 1, and here he resided for five years (1760-65). 
Li 1857, No. 1, which had been inscribed " Dr. Johnson's 
Staircase," was pulled down, but the stairs up which 
so many notable people went to visit him were taken 
away and preserved. Among these visitors was Madame 
de Boufilers, and here occurred the well-known incident, 
described by Beauclerk, to which I more fully refer 
in the chapter dealing with the Temple. 

Boswell, of course, tells us what Johnson's work- 
room was like, and on July 19, 1763, he made his first 
visit to it " up four pair of stairs " ; " it is," he adds, 
" very air5% commands a view of St. Paul's and many 
a brick roof. He has many good books, but they are 
all lying in confusion and dust." He had, however, 
been before this to the lower rooms " on the first floor 
of No. 1 Lmer Temple Lane," and here he found the 
" giant in his den," as Dr. Blair phrased it, on May 24, 
1763. " It must be confessed," he says, " that his 
apartment and furniture, and morning dress, were 
sufficiently uncouth . . . but all these slovenly particu- 
lars were forgotten the moment that he began to talk." 

41 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

It would appear that Lintot, the second of that 
name, kept his stock of books here before Johnson's 
time, for another entry by Boswell reads : " Mr. Levett 
this day showed me Dr. Johnson's Hbrary, which was 
contained in two garrets over his chambers, where 
Lintot, son of the celebrated bookseller of that name, 
had formerly his warehouse." 

Inner Temple Lane is, indeed, redolent of Johnson, 
but surely it never witnessed the Doctor in such an 
hilarious mood as on that occasion when, one night 
being seized with a fit of merriment at some humorous 
incident, he went, to the wonderment of his companions, 
who were ignorant of the cause of his amusement, 
" roaring all the way to the Temple Gate, where being 
arrived, he burst into such convulsive laughter that 
in order to support himself he laid hold of one of the 
posts at the side of the foot-pavement [I quote Boswell, 
of course], and sent forth peals so loud that, in the silence 
of the night, his voice seemed to resomid from Temple 
Bar to Fleet Ditch." 

Could we only know the nature of the joke which 
so moved to this " sudden glorying " " the awful, melan- 
choly, and venerable Johnson," as Boswell calls him ! 

The attraction of Johnson soon drew his future 
biographer to the spot where his idol lived, and we find 
Boswell lodging in the chambers of the Rev. Mr. Temple, 
at the south end of the lane : " I found them," he tells 
us, " particularly convenient for me, as they were so 
near Dr. Johnson's." 

Some ten years earlier, another notable man was 
living here, William Cowper to wit, who came hither 
in 1752, and here produced much of his early poetical 
work. Writing to Joseph Hill many years later (Dec. 2, 
1782), Cowper says : "I gave two hundred and fifty 
pounds for the chambers. Mr. Ashurst's receipt, and 
42 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

the receipt of the person of whom he purchased, are 
both among my papers ; and when wanted, as I suppose 
they will be in the case of a sale, shall be forthcoming 
at your order." This indicates that Cowper kept the 
rooms for at least thirty years, and also proves that at 
that period such chambers were to be bought outright, 
and not merely rented as at present. 

It was in 1809 that Charles Lamb came back to the 
vicinity in which he was born,^ and where he had already 
occupied chambers in Mitre Court Buildings. Writing 
to Manning in 1809, he says : " We are at 39 South- 
ampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, and shall be here 
until the end of May, when we remove to No. 4 Inner 
Temple Lane, where I mean to live and die. . . . 
Our place of final destination — I don't mean the grave, 
but No. 4 Inner Temple Lane — looks out upon a gloomy, 
churchyard-like court, called Hare Court, with three 
trees and a pump in it. Do you know it ? I was born 
near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was 
a Rechabite of six years old." In another letter, this 
time to Coleridge, Lamb tells his friend that he has 
" two rooms on the third floor, and five rooms above, 
with an inner staircase to myself, and all new painted, 
etc., for £30 a year." " The rooms," he adds, " are 
delicious. . . . Hare Court's trees come in at the 
window, so that it's like living in a garden ; " while in 
his humorous epistle to Manning, dated 1810, he remarks 
that in his " best room is a choice collection of the works 
of Hogarth, an English painter of some humour. In 
my next best are shelves containing a small but well- 
chosen library. My best room commands a court, in 
which there are trees and a pump, the water of which 
is excellent cold with brandy, and not very insipid 
without." 

^ His birth took place in Crown Office Row in 1775. 

43 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

No sign of Lamb's chambers remains to-day, the 
modern erection known as Johnson's Buildings having 
replaced them ; but the pump, which will always be 
associated with him, and the court into which he so often 
looked, still remind us of the gentle presence of Ella 
here. Notwithstanding his assertion that he would 
live and die in Inner Temple Lane, Lamb left it in 
October 1817, and the Temple, as a place of residence, 
knew him no more. 

Close to Inner Temple Lane is Falcon Court, 
notable as being the site of the premises bearing the 
sign of the ' Falcon,' where the great printer Wynkyn 
de Worde lived, and where was printed the first edition 
of Sackville's Gorbodiic, by William Griffith, in 1565. 
Griffith had his bookselling shop on the opposite side 
of the thoroughfare, in St. Dunstan's Churchyard. 
Falcon Court is immediately under 32 Fleet Street 
(the ' Falcon '), and this property, together with 
six other houses, was bequeathed by John Fisher, 
in 1547, to the Cordwainers' Company in trust for 
the poor of St. Dunstan's, the only conditions being 
the preaching of an annual sermon, the praying for 
the repose of the benefactor's soul, and the drinking of 
a certain quantity of sack. The last condition seems 
to indicate that Fisher once kept the ' Falcon ' as a 
tavern, and that the ruling passion was strong in death. 

We are told by Noble that, in 1651, there was 
apprehended at Denzie's, the barber's, " over against 
St. Dunstan's Church, by Falcon Court," " the prince 
of prigs, the grand thief captain, James Hind," who 
was executed at Doncaster in the following year.^ 

No. 32 Fleet Street existed into the nineteenth 

^ Hamilton the printer had his works in Falcon Court, and here 
occurred a disastrous fire which destroyed property to the value of 
;^8o,ooo. 

44 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

century, and then bore the date of 1667 on its front. 
It was occupied at this time by John Murray, and 
from here Childe Harold as well as the earlier 
numbers of the Quarterly, were published 

Boswell, it will be remembered, accidentally met 
Johnson at this spot on March 20, 1781, and " stepped 
aside into Falcon Court " with his hero, on which 
occasion the Doctor uttered his aphorism that " a 
London morning does not go with the sun." 

I have overlooked, a few doors farther west, a 
little alley, which existed till the sixties of the nine- 
teenth century, bearing no name, but earlier known as 
Hercules' Pillars Alley, from the fact that the inn 
with that sign was situated in it. The court was, 
indeed, a great place for inns, and Strype describes it 
as " but narrow, and altogether inhabited by such as 
keep Publick-Houses for entertainment, for which it is 
of note." Its sole interest centres in this connection. 

Another lane leading to the Temple is close by — this 
is Mitre Court, at the corner of which the famous Mitre 
Tavern, at one time erroneously associated with Dr. 
Johnson and his circle, was situated. It was at the 
Fleet Street end of the court that Sarah Malcolm, 
garbed in a crape mourning gown, a white apron, and 
black gloves, and with, it is said, her face painted, 
was executed on March 7, 1733, for several atrocious 
murders in Tanfield Court, Temple. 

It was at No. 16 Mitre Court Buildings, leading 
from this old court to King's Bench Walk, that Lamb 
took rooms in 1800. Writing to Manning, he says : 
" I live at No. 16 Mitre Court Buildings, a pistol-shot 
off Baron Maseres. . . . He lives on the ground floor 
for convenience of the gout ; I prefer the attic storey for 
the air. . . . A''.^. — When you come to see me, mount 
up to the top of the stairs — and come in flannel, for it 

45 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

is pure airy up there. And bring your glass, and I will 
show you the Surrey Hills. My bed faces the river, 
so as by perking up upon my haunches, and supporting 
my carcass with my elbows, without much wrying 
my neck, I can see the white sails glide by the bottom 
of the King's Bench Walks." 

The present Mitre Court Buildings are not, however, 
those in which Lamb lived, as they were not erected, 
on the site of the earlier ones, till 1830. 

By another letter from Lamb to Manning we learn 
that Rickman, who was, he says, "the finest fellow to 
drop in o' nights," and was a friend of Southey, lived 
here at the same time. Lamb remained till 1809, three 
years after he had inaugurated his famous ' Wednesday 
Evening ' gatherings. 

Ram Alley, 1 No. 46 Fleet Street, subsequently 
known as Hare Court, ^ was situated in that area of 
Whitefriars known as Alsatia, which had at one time 
been a conventual sanctuarj^ but afterwards developed 
into a chartered abode of libertinism and roguery of 
all sorts ; its characteristics being well illustrated 
in Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia. Curiously enough. 
Ram Alley also gave its name to a dramatic work, for 
Barry's Bam Alley, or Merrie Tricks, printed in 1611, 
took its title from the place. At this time, it was known, 
we are told, for its " cookes, alemen, and laundresses." 

Strype, indeed, describes it as " taken up by publick 
houses," and he adds that it was " a place of no great 
reputation, as being a kind of privileged place for 
debtors, before the late Act ^ of Parliament for taking 
them away." What it was in Strype's day it had 
been much earlier, for we find references to it and its 

1 So called by Strype. Horwood gives it as Ram Court. 
- Not to be confounded with Hare Court in the Temple. 
3 Viz. Act 9 & lo William iii. 

46 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

questionable denizens, as well as its eating-houses, 
in the works of Ben Jonson, Massinger, Shadwell, 
and other contemporary writers ; while Scott, in 
Kenilworth, puts a reference to the place in the mouth 
of the Countess of Rutland. 

In his Life of Charles I., Hamon L'Estrange 
gives a curious and amusing account of an affray in 
Ram Alley, brought about by the ' Temple Sparks,' 
who, having instituted a Lord of Misrule, tried to 
exact a contribution to the Christmas festivities, of 
5s. a house, in default of which a so-called ' Gunner ' 
battered down the door. The Lord ]\Iayor, being 
summoned at last, put a stop, not without trouble 
and blows, to this attempted extortion. 

In Ram Alley was situated a certain ' Hare House ' 
(from which the later title of the court took its name), 
which was bequeathed by its owner to the parish in 
1594, and in the following century the Ram Tavern 
is mentioned as also being in its precincts. 

One of the two Serjeants' Inns (the other is in 
Chancery Lane), which are situated in our district, 
comes next in Fleet Street, but what I have to say 
concerning it will be best left to another chapter ; ^ 
and therefore passing it, as well as the little Lombard 
Street, another of the tributaries out of the ill-famed 
Alsatia, one of the worst haunts even down to late 
times, where the printing-press of Messrs. Bradbury, 
Agnew & Co. is situated, we come to Bouverie Street, 
perhaps as well-known a thoroughfare as any in the 
easterly part of London, being notable as a one-time 
residence of Hazlitt, who was living at No. 3 in 1829, 
and still more so as the street in which Punch and the 
Daily News are printed. It was called, originally, 
Whitefriers Street, and connected Fleet Street with 

1 See chapter on the ' Inns of Court.' 

47 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

that mysterious district to which I have aheady re- 
ferred as Alsatia, and of which a more detailed descrip- 
tion is necessary and appropriate here. 

Whitefriars takes its name from a colony of Car- 
melite monks (Fratres Beatse Mariae de Monte Carmeli), 
so called from the dress they affected, which, having been 
founded by Sir Richard Gray in 1241, secured a piece of 
ground abutting on Fleet Street by gift from Edward i. 
This plot extended, I imagine, roughly from what is 
now Bouverie Street to one portion of New Bridge 
Street, for we are told that the Prior of the Order 
made complaint in 1290 of the smells, arising from the 
Fleet Ditch then flowing where the latter thoroughfare 
is now, which are said not only to have overpowered 
the incense in their chapel, but even to have caused the 
death of some members of the fraternity.^ 

The Chapel of the Order was rebuilt, in 1350, by Hugh 
Courtenay, second Earl of Devonshire, and seventy 
years later Robert Marshall, Bishop of Hereford, gave 
it a steeple. It would seem that the foundation was a 
rich and an increasingly prosperous one, noted for its 
library, and under the immediate patronage of various 
rulers of this country. With the Dissolution, however, 
it shared the fate of so many similar institutions, and 
its church was demolished in 1545. It must have 
been an imposing edifice, as we can see by Wyngaerde's 
" Map " (1543), where the spire of its chapel is shown 
rising far above it. Many great men had been buried 
in it, and here lay in state, by his own order, the body 
of John of Gaunt before being carried to St. Paul's, 
in 1399. When he dissolved the fraternity, Henry viii. 
gave its chapter-house to his physician. Dr. Butts, 
and Stow writes that " many fair houses were built, 
lodgings for noblemen and others," on the site of this 

1 Rot. Pari. vol. i. p. 6i, 

48 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

once almost princely establishment. A relic of the 
monastery was found in Briton's Court, Whitefriars, 
in 1867, an account of which appeared in the Builder 
for that year. 

The immunities enjoyed by the Order — the right 
of sanctuary, etc. — seem to have attached to the site of 
this religious house, or to have been assumed to exist 
by later inhabitants, long after any sign of it remained ; 
and in Elizabeth's reign the dwellers here appear to 
have come to some arrangement with the authorities 
to this end, as by a document in the Lansdowne MS.,^ 
we are told that, in return for freedom from City rules, 
laws, ordinances, taxation, etc., they promised to duly 
attend St. Paul's ; to appoint their own officers ; arrest 
any rogues found within their precincts ; look after 
their own poor ; and maintain, during winter-time, 
" lanthornes and lights " ; adding the somewhat elastic 
phrase, " as hitherto hath been accustomed." 

It is obvious that such a state within a state should 
eventually lead to friction, and a proof of this is forth- 
coming in the Inquest Book, under date of 1608, where 
we read : " Item, wee pr'sent Richard Whaler late 
constable of the same precincte (Whiteffriers) and 
John Saunders deputie constable to John Turner of 
the same precincte for that wee of the enquest goeinge 
to p'forme our duties according to the Lo : Maior's 
command by warrant to take notice of such innormities 
as wee should their fynd, weere resisted by the afore- 
said constables notwithstanding my Lo : authorite or 
warrant." Nor was this the worst : taverns of the 
lowest sort sprang up (in 1609 there were eleven vic- 
tuallers here, six being considered quite sufficient) ; 
disorderly houses abounded (one Anne Flore, who had 
been ' carted ' once, was suspected of still carrying on 

1 No. 155, p. 79. 
D 49 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

her infamous trade) ; and vice of all sorts was rampant. 
Nothing shows more clearly the degeneration of the 
neighbourhood than the crowds of tenements which 
gradually sprang up where had hitherto been the 
houses of notable men. For instance, the mansion of 
Sir John Parker was " divided into twentie severall 
tenements " ; that of one Francis Pike, into no fewer 
than thirty-nine ; and both Parker and Pike seem to 
have allowed this for the sake of the rents obtained, 
for we read that " these two landlords are those that 
doe breade muche pore people in the same precincte, 
and much annoyance." Shadwell, in his Squire of 
Alsatia, has depicted something of the low life of the 
place in his day, but the great word-picture of it is 
to be found in The Fortunes of Nigel, where, as Leigh 
Hunt says, Scott has painted the place as if he had 
lived in it.^ 

In spite of its once notorious character, Whitefriars 
has had noble and even famous residents in the past. 
Sir John Cheke, tutor to Edward vi., lived here ; so 
did Sackville and Ogilby and Shirley, Lord Delawarr 
and Lady Cork, Sir Matthew Carew and Lady Morrison ; 
while Sir Balthazar Gerbier (who collected for George 
Villiers, Duke of Buckingham) had his Art Academy 
here in 1649. Other residents of note include the 
Bishop of Worcester and the Earl of Rutland, and 
Henry Grey, eighth Earl of Kent, who married a lady, 
the daughter of Lord Shrewsbury, who died here in 
1651, and left her house to her friend, John Selden who 
was then one of the most notable inhabitants. In 
1649, Lord Essex, of the Parliamentary Forces, derived 
some of the annuity given to him by the Government 
from property here. 

In 1697, the privileges so long attached to Alsatia 

^ See, too, Macaulay's History, vol. i. chap. iii. 

50 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

were abolished by Act of Parliament ; but long after 
that time the place retained its ill-fame. At one 
time it was a great resort of fencing-masters, and with 
one of them, Turner by name, a famous story of revenge, 
in the reign of James i., is associated. The anecdote is 
given, with some detail, by Timbs in his Romance of 
London, but it may be shortly outlined as follows. 
It appears that Turner, during a fencing bout at Rycote, 
in Oxfordshire, had accidentally put out the eye of 
Lord Sanquhar. For this, he was never forgiven ; and 
Sanquhar seems to have bided his time for revenge — 
a revenge made the more necessary (as Sanquhar 
thought) by the fact that, being at the French Court, 
and being asked by the King, Henry iv., how he had 
lost his eye, Sanquhar had said it was done with a 
sword ; whereupon the monarch asked, " Doth the man 
live ? " It was some years, however, before Sanquhar 
put his purpose, so long brooded over, into execution. 
But at last the time came, and having hired two ruffians, 
he caused them to get into friendly converse with 
Turner, and then to shoot him dead. A warrant was 
promptly issued for Sanquhar's apprehension, with 
the result that he was taken, and together with his 
accomplices, Carliel and Irweng, was hanged — the 
actual murderer at the top of what is now Bouverie 
Street, and the instigator of the crime before West- 
minster Hall. 

The name ' Alsatia,' which was for long the cant 
designation of this district, is taken from the French 
Alsace, long notorious for its internal strife and political 
disaffection. Exactly when it was given is uncertain, 
but its first appearance in print seems to have occurred 
in a tract, by one Thomas Powel, issued in 1623, and 
entitled Wheresoever you see mee, Trust unto yourself e : 
or. The Mysterie of Lending mid Borrowing. After 

51 



THE ANNAI.S OF FLEET STREET 

that period, the name becomes fairly common ; thus, 
it occurs in Otway's The Soldier'' s Fortune, and it forms 
the title of Shadwell's play, The Squire of Alsatia, 
published in 1688, much of the scenario of which is 
placed at the George Tavern,^ Whitefriars. By Shad- 
well's descriptions of his characters — for the most part 
bullies, hypocrites, gulls, and blackguards generally — 
we learn, clearly enough, what sort of people congregated 
in this hotbed of iniquity, in his day. Now, all this 
district, with its large offices and warehouses, its fine 
buildings on the river-side, and its general activity, 
is as much typical of work and energy as it was at an 
earlier period of sloth and crime. 

Before leaving Whitefriars, or Alsatia, mention 
must be made of the play-house once within its pre- 
cincts, and it is appropriate here to speak of it, after 
referring to the dramatist Shadwell's general descrip- 
tion of this locality. This place of entertainment, 
however, can perhaps hardly be described as a theatre 
in the modern acceptation of the term, for it was estab- 
lished in the hall of the old Whitefriars Monastery, 
the reason for this being the objection of the Corpora- 
tion to permit of a regular theatre within its jurisdiction. 
The Whitefriars play-house appears to have followed 
close on the better known one at Blackfriars, which 
was established in 1576, Indeed, according to Payne 
Collier, it v/as fitted up in 1586. It did not have a 
very long career, however, for we know that it was 

^ The George Tavern afterwards became the printing - office of 
the elder Bowyer, and v/as situated in Dogwell Court. In 1713 it 
was burnt down, but was rebuilt. In the new house the second Bowyer 
carried on business. Later Davison occupied it, and subsequently 
it became part of the famous establishment of Messrs. Bradbury & 
Evans, the publishers, inter alia, of many of Dickens's books and of 
Punch, of which they are proprietors. There was also a Black Lion 
Tavern in Whitefriars, of which Shepherd made a drawing in 1859. 

52 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

dismantled in 1613. In a survey drawn up three 
years later, mention is made of the house as having 
been carried on for thirty years, and it tells us that 
Field's Woman is a Weathercock (1612), played before 
James i. privately at Whitefriars, was one of the first 
productions given there after the removal of the 
" King's servants " from Blackfriars.^ That the City 
looked askance even at a theatre within a privileged 
building, is evidenced by the fact that, in 1609, there 
was ' presented ' " one play-house in the same pre- 
cincte of Whitefriars, not fittinge there to be nov/ 
tolerable." Other evidence is forthcoming that the 
place was doomed to a short life, and v/e are told, in 
1616, that " the raine hath made its way in, and if it be 
not repaired it must soone be plucked dow^ne, or it will 
fall." As we hear nothing of it after this date, the pro- 
bability is that it either fell, or was " plucked downe." 

There is a record that plays were established here 
in 1580, but the patent mentioning specifically " the 
theatre," is dated Jan. 1610. My conclusion, there- 
fore, is (in view of the fact that the dissolution of 
the monastery was confirmed in 1608) that plays 
were first acted in the old hall or refectory of the 
monastery, and that, later, an actual play-house was 
erected either on its site or close by. So little, how- 
ever, is actually known of the place that this can only 
be regarded as a probable supposition. 

BoLT-iN-TuN Court lies between Bouverie Street 
and Water Lane. Except for the fact that it takes 
its name from a once much-frequented tavern ^ bearing 
this sign, it has not any particular interest, and, so far 
as I can gather, no history. 

Water Lane, since 1844 known as Whitefriars 

1 Noble. 

2 Shepherd made a water-colour drawing of this inn in 1859. 

53 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Street, a few paces farther east, on the other hand, is a 
not inconsiderable street, compared with the courts 
and alleys we have passed. This lane led directly into 
the Alsatian precincts, and was one of the worst haunts 
in that unsavoury neighbourhood. It is well depicted 
in Ogilby's " Plan," running from Fleet Street to the 
river, which at its lower end came up in a channel a 
considerable way from the foreshore. 

Noble has preserved some early references to Water 
Lane, and in his pages I find that it was ' presented,' in 
1569, for its ' fall ' of water upon the people's heads ; 
and in 1574, complaint was made concerning " grete 
dunghills conteyninge by estimacion above 40 loade 
caste up by the water of the Thames," on its west side. 
Indeed, the place was for long in a fearful state ; and 
in 1610, we are told that " the waie beinge soe stopped 
with dung and dirte that the passengers can hardlie 
passe, and the pavement soe broken and ruyned that 
if speedilie redresse be not had neither horse can drawe 
his loade nor passengers goe that waie." All this 
occurred when the lane was much narrower than it is 
to-day, but little seems to have been done, notwith- 
standing the matter was brought before the Common 
Council, intermittently, between the years 1594 to 1596, 
until after the Great Fire, when the street was enlarged, 
and if not beautified at least cleaned. There was a 
Black Lion Tavern about half-way down the lane, and 
among its residents was Tompion, the famous watch- 
maker, who died at his shop, at the north corner, in 
1713 ; and Filby, the tailor (at the sign of the 'Harrow'), 
who supplied Oliver Goldsmith with some of those 
suits of which the poet was so inordinately proud. ^ 

Horwood's " Plan " for 1799 shows a tiny Crown 
Court, and Strype gives Hanging Sword Alley and 

1 See Boswell's Johnson. 
54 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

White Lion Court, all three lying between Water 
Lane and the entrance to Salisbury Court. Crown 
Court only requires this mention of its one-time exist- 
ence ; but Hanging Sword Alley, which communicated 
with it, apparently took its name from the sign of one 
of its houses, which is mentioned so early as 1574, as 
being in the possession of a Mr, Blewit, which proves 
its antiquity if nothing else ; White Lion Court has not 
even this hall-mark. Hanging Sword Alley was once 
known as Blood-bowl Alley, which uneuphonious 
name it took from a notorious house known by this 
title, the cellar of which is reproduced by Hogarth in 
the ninth plate of his " Industry and Idleness " series. 
It will be remembered that the Jerry Cruncher of A Tale 
of Two Cities resided here. 

Salisbury Court, leading directly into Salisbury 
Square, is shown, under this name, in Agas's " Plan " 
of 1560. Strype calls it Dorset Court, by which name 
the street on the south of the square is still known ; but 
Horwood (1799) gives it its earlier title. It takes its 
name from the great house and its grounds, on part of 
which it was formed, belonging to the Bishop of 
Salisbury in the thirteenth century. This house later, 
at the beginning of the seventeenth century, was 
granted to the Earl of Dorset (hence its other title). 
I have something to say about this mansion elsewhere, 
so shall here confine myself to a few words about the 
past notable residents in Salisbury Court {i.e. the 
street) and Salisbury Square. 

It appears that, during the latter half of the six- 
teenth century, Lord Treasurer Buckhurst induced the 
See of Salisbury to exchange this property " for a piece 
of land near Cricklade in Wilts " ; at least so Seth Ward, 
Bishop of Salisbury from 1667 to 1689, told Aubrey, the 
antiquary. Even in those days such an exchange 

55 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

could, one imagines, only have been brought about by 
pressure, and Ward ruefully hints at this. 

In 1634, Bulstrode Whitelocke took a house here ; ^ 
and in, or near, the square lived Dryden, from 
1673 to 1682 ; Locke dated the dedication of his 
Essay on the Human Voider standing from Dorset 
Court (believed, by Cunningham, to be the one in 
Fleet Street) in 1690 ; Shad well once lived in Salisbury 
Court, and there, no doubt, he accumulated the ex- 
perience which he gave to the world in his Squire of 
Alsatia ; Cave and Underbill also resided in the vicinity ; 
and the presence here of the Dorset Court Theatre, 
about which I shall have something to say farther on, 
was sufficient to account for the presence of Davenant, 
and, later, his widow, Lady Davenant, and such once 
well - known actors as Harris and Sandford. But 
Salisbur}^ Court is chiefly associated with Samuel 
Richardson, who had his printing establishment in the 
north-west corner of the square, with an entrance into 
Fleet Street (now No. 76). Mrs. Barbauld, in her Life 
of Richardso7i, tells us of his presence here, in the 
following words, the year of his settling here being 
1755 : "In town he took a range of old houses, eight in 
number, which he pulled down, and built an extensive 
and commodious range of warehouses and printing- 
offices. It was still in Salisbury Court,- in the north- 
west corner, but it is at present (1802) concealed by 
other houses from common observation. The dwelling- 
house, it seems, was neither so large nor so airy as 
the one he quitted ; and therefore the reader will not 

^ For an account of Salisbury Square sec the author's History of the 
Squares of London. 

2 The words "still in Salisbury Court" refer to the fact that 
Richardson had been a compositor in another printing establish- 
ment here. 

56 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

be so ready, probably, as Mr. Richardson seems to 
have been, m accusing his wife of perverseness in not 
liking the new habitation as well as the old. ' Every- 
body,' he says, ' is more pleased with what I have 
done than my wife.' " Here Richardson entertained 
most of the notable literary men of the day : Johnson 
and Hogarth were his guests ; Goldsmith read proofs 
for the author of Clarissa here ; here Pamela was 
written ; and here Maitland's London was " Printed 
by Samuel Richardson " in 1739. In 1754, Richardson 
moved, finally, to Parson's Green. 

Another man who once resided in Salisbury Court 
was that John Eyre who, although a rich man, was 
transported for stealing paper from the Guildhall in 
1771. He seems to have been marked out for some 
such fate, if the anecdote told by Noble be true. 
It is said that Eyre's uncle made tv.'o wills, in one of 
which he left £500 to his nephew and the rest of a con- 
siderable estate to a clergyman ; in the other, the 
£500 to the clergyman and the residue to the nephew. 
Eyre, not knowing of the existence of the first will, 
destroyed the second in order to avoid having to 
pay the legacy ! In Salisbury Court, too, died, on 
June 29, 1677, Sir John King, Solicitor-General to the 
Duke of York, and Treasurer of the Inner Temple ; 
and, in 1732, Mrs. Daffy of ' Elixir ' fame ; and it was 
in the square that the copies of Mrs. Clarke's book, ex- 
posing her relations with the Duke of York and Colonel 
Wardle, were publicly burnt. 

About the same time, No. 53 was occupied by 
John Tatum, the silversmith ; and here, acting as his 
assistant in 1812, was Michael Faraday, the great 
scientist. 

At one corner of Salisbury Square, Messrs. Peacock, 
Bampton, & Mansfield, who initiated the pocket- 

57 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

book of to-day, by their Polite Repository of 1778, 
much patronised by Royalty, had their headquarters ; 
here, too, Powell's Puppet Show, referred to in the 
Spectator, enlivened the precincts ; and in the days 
of William iv,, the Misses Thompson kept a boarding- 
school, and issued an amusing advertisement to attract 
patrons. At this time the place was still a residen- 
tial centre ; for, in 1831, William Green, a Trustee 
of the Law Life Assurance Company, was living here ; 
while Timbs, in his Doctors and Patients, tells us that 
the last man in London who is believed to have worn 
the scarlet coat, flap waistcoat, and frilled sleeves, 
then the badge of the physician, was a quack doctor 
who lived in the corner of Salisbury Square, and who 
might be seen any day pacing the pavement in front 
of his establishment, until he took to his bed and died 
of extreme old age. 

It should be remembered, too, that one of the chief 
of the so-called ' Mug Houses ' was situated in the 
square. On an occasion of one of the Jacobite dis- 
turbances, on July 20, 1716, when the rallying cry was 
' High Church ' and ' Ormond,' the mob, led by a 
man named Bean, broke into the house, then kept 
by Robert Read, who, in defending his property, shot 
a weaver — Vaughan. For this he was tried for man- 
slaughter, but acquitted. Five of the rioters, however, 
were sentenced to be hanged at the Fleet Street end 
of Salisbury Square. In an account of this incident 
in the Weekly Journal for July 28, 1716, and for the 
following August 4, we learn that a petition was sent 
to the Court of Aldermen, setting forth the frequency 
of these riots, and pointing out that Read was justified 
in defending his property. 

Although, as we have seen, there was once a play- 
house, of a kind, in Whitefriars, the only theatre in 
58 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

something like our modern acceptation of the term, 
in Fleet Street, was situated in Salisbury Court, and 
was variously called the ' Salisbury Court,' ' Dorset 
Gardens,' ' Davenant's,' or ' Duke's ' Theatre, and was 
erected at the south-eastern extremity of Salisbury 
Court, with a fine stone frontage and flight of steps 
to the river, ^ as well as an imposing facade towards 
the north. But this structure had been preceded by, 
at least, two earlier play-houses, the first of which 
was, apparently, erected about the year 1629, but 
during the Civil War fell a prey to the sectarian 
zeal of the Puritans. It was built on ground belonging 
to the Earl of Dorset, whose town mansion adjoined 
it, and by him it is said to have been let for a term 
of sixty-one years, the sum of £950 being paid down. 
To whom, however, this lease was granted does not ap- 
pear. But it is interesting to find the following entry 
in the Domestic State Papers, under date of March 25, 
1639 : " Licence to William Davenant to build a play- 
house in a place near Fleet Street, assigned by the 
Commissioners of Buildings, and to take such money 
as is accustomed to be given in such cases " ; because, 
although it is known that Davenant erected a theatre 
on the site of the old granary of Dorset House, which 
had been hitherto used as one, and demolished, as we 
have seen, in 1649, it is not generally remembered 
that Davenant had applied for permission to build 
it so early as the date of this licence. As it was, he 
did nothing till the Restoration, when the new building 
(1660) of the second theatre at this spot was begun. 

1 There is a water-colour drawing of it in the Grace Collection. 
Also there is a view of the river front in Settle's Empress of Morocco 
(1673), reproduced in the Gentleman' s Magazine for 1814, and a view, 
by Sutton NichoUs, published in 1710, in which the surrounding houses 
are also depicted. 

59 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

We are indebted to Pepys for some glimpses of this 
place and the perform-ances there. The Diarist, a 
famous play -goer as we know, paid several visits here, 
the first of which was on Feb. 9, 1661 : " Creed and I 
to Whitefriars to the Play-house and saw The Mad 
Lover (by Beaumont and Fletcher), the first time I 
ever saw it acted, which I liked pretty well." Three 
days later, he went again ; but this visit proved dis- 
appointing : " By water to Salisbury Court play-house, 
where not liking to sit, we went out again." On the 
23rd of the same m.onth, Pepys kept his twenty-eighth 
birthday by another visit : "To the Play-house, and 
there saw The Changeling (by Middleton and Rowley), 
the first time it hath been acted these twenty years, 
and it takes exceedingly " ; and he adds, " I see the 
gallants do begin to be tyred v>^ith the vanity and 
pride of the theatre actors, who are indeed grown 
very proud and rich." On the 2nd of March, he is 
there again, and finds " the house as full as could be," 
the play being The Queene's Maske (otherwise Love's 
Mistress, by Heywood), which he saw again, v/ith 
Captain Ferrers, on the 25th of the same month. On 
April 1, he witnessed Fletcher's Rule a Wife and have 
a Wife here, but did not like it any more than he did 
a play called Love's Quarrell, at the first performance 
of which he was present here on April 6. He had 
better luck on the last occasion he records of paying 
the Salisbury Court Theatre a visit. It was on 
Sept. 9, 1661, and although the play — Ford's 'Tis 
Pity Sheets a Whore — was not to his taste, " it was my 
fortune," he ingenuously remarks, " to sit by a most 
pretty and most ingenious lady, which pleased me 
very much." How long Davenant remained in Dorset 
Court I do not know, but he had certainly removed 
his company to the old Tennis Court, in Portugal 
60 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

Row, Lincoln's Inn Fields, before the Salisbury House 
Theatre was destroyed in the Great Fire. 

A few years subsequent to this event, Davenant 
died (1668), and shortly afterwards his widow com- 
missioned Wren to design a new play-house close to the 
site of the former granary-theatre. This was completed 
in 1671, and the double iagade, to which I have before 
referred, was thus the work of England's greatest 
architect, much of the internal decoration being due 
to the skill of Grinling Gibbon. 

The new house was called ' The Duke's Theatre,' 
from the fact that the Duke of York's company of 
players performed there. Downes, in his Iloscius 
Anglicanus (1708), thus speaks of the inauguration 
of the new venture : — 

" The new theatre in Dorset Garden being finished, 
and our company (the Duke's) after Sir William's 
death being under the rule and dominion of his widow, 
the Lady Davenant, Mr. Betterton, and Mr. Harris 
(Mr. Charles Davenant, her son, acting for her), they 
removed from Lincoln's Inn thither. And on the 9th 
day of November, 1671, they opened their new theatre 
with Sir Martin Mar-all, which continued acting three 
days together, with a full audience each day, not- 
withstanding it had been acted thirty days before in 
Lincoln's-inn-fields, and above four times at Court." 

L'Estrange wrote the prologue to the play on this 
occasion ; while we learn from another source that 
the charge for admission to the pit at the Duke's 
Theatre on the first night of a new performance was 
five shillings. The theatre had an existence of some 
ten years, and then, when the combination of the 
Duke's Players with the King's Players took place, on 
the death of Killigrew, it was deserted, the new com- 
pany going, on Nov. 16, 1682, to Drury Lane. 

61 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

It is interesting to learn that operas were first 
introduced on the Enghsh stage at the Duke's Theatre, 
and that here, when Lord Orrery's play of Henry the 
Fifth was performed, Harris, Betterton, and Smith 
wore respectively the actual coronation robes of the 
Duke of York, Charles ii., and the Earl of Oxford. It 
was here, too, that Shadwell's operatic version of The 
Tempest was produced, with the great splendour of 
scenery and dresses on which this theatre prided 
itself, in 1673. 

" Ah Friends ! poor Dorset Garden House is gone ; 
Our merry meetings there are all undone," 

says Farquhar in the prologue to his Constant Coujole, 
published in 1700 ; and, indeed, its glory had departed, 
and the place was given over to exhibitions of Avrestling ^ 
and fencing (always closely associated with Whitefriars) 
in 1697. In the following year a penny lottery was 
drawn here ; but when there was a scheme on foot to 
reopen it as a theatre, an advertisement of which 
appeared in the Daily Courant for Oct. 22, 1706, the 
intended performance being " By the deserted Company 
of the Theatre Royal, at the Queen's Theatre, in Dorset 
Gardens," the Queen, notwithstanding the compliment 
implied in the new name of the play-house, caused it 
to be closed. 2 The place was finally demolished in 
1720 (not 1709, as Noble states ; for Strype speaks of it 
as standing when he published his edition of ' Stow ' in 
1720), and the site for a time used as a timber-yard. 
Later, the New River Company's offices were situated 

^ A notice of one of these bouts — between William and Richard 
Joy — appeared in the Postman for Dec. 8, 1679. 

2 Noble says Queen Anne did this in 1703 ; but had this been so, 
would any company have dared to issue such an advertisement three 
years later ? 

62 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

here, and later still those of the City Gas Works (1814). 
In 1885, the City of London School was erected on the 
spot, which had been identified not only with one of 
the City's private palaces, but also with the annals of 
the stage at an interesting and momentous period 
of its history. 

The last turnings out of Fleet Street are St. Bride's 
Avenue and St. Bride's Lane. The former was 
made in 1825 at a cost of £10,000. It leads to the 
church. Here, at No. 85, Punch was published for 
many years ; and next door were the oflices of another 
publisher, David Bogue. 

St, Bride's Lane is far older, and is shown in 
Ogilby's " Plan " of 1676 ; ^ indeed, a street is indicated 
here by Agas (1560), although it then formed, probably, 
merely the precincts of St. Bride's Church. We know 
of a tavern with the sign of the ' Twelve Bells ' in this 
lane, where the first assemblies of the Madrigal Society 
were held, in 1741 ; while the ' Cogers ' had one of 
their meeting-places at No. 15, known as Cogers' ^ 
Hall. Strype describes St. Bride's Lane as coming " out 
of Fleet Street by St. Bridget's Churchyard, which, with 
a turning passage by Bridewell and the Ditch Side, 
falleth down to Woodmongers' Wharf, by the Thames." 
He adds that " This lane is of note for the many hatters 
there inhabiting." 

Before leaving the south-east corner of Fleet Street, 
the former existence of a once notable landmark at this 
spot claims attention. I refer to the ancient palace 
of Bridewell, which, after having served its original 

1 Akcrman gives three tokens in Bride Lane : those of William 
Adley, 1663 ; of Daniel Birtwistle, at the ' White Bear,' in 1666 ; and 
one with the legend, " At the 3 Coltes " ; and Boyne gives one, of Will. 
Hearne, at the ' White Bear.' 

2 First established in 1751, and so called from the Latin cogiio : 
hence a society of philosophers and thinkers. 

63 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

regal purpose, was put to far different uses, and eventu- 
ally disappeared as the result of modern requirements. 
From a remark of Stow's, it would seem that a royal 
residence had been situated at this spot from early days, 
for he calls Bridewell " of old time the king's house, for 
the kings of this realm have been there lodged." And, 
indeed, we have another, though rather hazy, record 
of this. For here, the Norman kings are said to have 
held their courts, and Henry i. is reported to have 
given stone towards an early rebuilding of the place. 
Excavations in Bride Lane, in 1847, brought to light 
some undoubted stone -work of the Norman period. It 
seems probable, indeed, that the Montfiquit ^ Tower, 
v/hich stood "west of Baynard's Castle," occupied 
the site of the later Bridewell. But the first clear 
reference we have to the place is in the year 1522, when 
the Emperor Charles v. came to England. For his 
accommodation, Henry viii. caused to be built, or 
rather rebuilt, " a stately and beautiful house." 
This work was executed, according to Hentzner,^ 
in •'^ the short space of six weeks, which would at 
once prove that there was already some kind of a 
structure here. 

As it happened, Charles v. did not inhabit it, after 
all, being lodged at the Blackfriars, on the other side 
of the Fleet Stream. His attendants, however, took up 
their residence in Bridewell, and for the sake of con- 
venience, " a gallery was made out of the house (Bride- 
well) over the water (the Fleet Ditch), and through the 
wall of the city, into the emperor's lodging at the 
Blackfriars." ^ 

1 Built by the Baron of Montfiquit, who came over with the Con- 
queror. 

2 Voyage to England in isgy. 
^ Stow's Survey, 

64 




■n 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

Henry viii. himself frequently used Bridewell, and 
was lodged here in 1525, when his Parliament was held 
in the hall of the Blackfriars ; it being known, because 
of this, as the Black Parliament. Three years later, the 
King summoned his Council, as well as the Papal Legate, 
Cardinal Campeius, hither, to hear him discourse on 
marital relations ! 

" On the 8th of November," says Stow, " in his 
great chamber, he made unto them an oration touch- 
ing his marriage with Queen Katharine." 

Here, too, Wolsey and Campeius had their inter\'iew 
with the unfortunate queen, to announce to her the 
decision to hold an inquiry into the circumstances of 
her marriage : and again, later, to offer her carte blanche 
from Henry, if she would consent to a divorce, 

Shakespeare, who followed Hall's Chronicles pretty 
closely, places the two scenes of the third act of 
Henry VIII. at Bridewell. Wolsey was presented ^^'ith 
" a house at Bridewell in Fleet Street " ^ by Henry ; 
but this probably means that he had a suite of apart- 
ments allotted him in the palace itself. 

After the King's death, the place was, apparently, 
deserted, and in 1553 Edward vi. sent for Sir George 
Bacon, the Lord Mayor, and, I quote Stow, "gave unto 
him for the commonalty and citizens, to be a workhouse 
for the poor and idle persons of the City, his house of 
Bridewell, and seven hundred marks land, late of the 
possessions of the house of the Savoy, and all the bedding 
and other furniture of the said hospital of the Savoy, 
towards the maintenance of the said workhouse of 
Bridewell. . . . This gift King Edward confirmed by 
his Charter, dated the 26th of June next following ; 
and in the year 1555, in the month of February, Sir 
William Gerarde, mayor, and the aldermen entered 

^ Cavendish's Life of Wolsey. 

E 65 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Bridewell, and took possession thereof, according to the 
gift of the said King Edward, the same being con- 
firmed by Queen Mary." 

From other sources we know that this splendid 
gift was presented to the citizens at the instance of 
Bishop Ridley, who had appealed, by letter, ^ to Mr. 
Secretary Cecil, on behalf of " our Master Christ's 
cause." As his epistle is short and eloquent, I 
give it : — - 

" Good Mr. Cecil, — I must be a suitor to you in 
our Master Christ's cause. I beseech you be good unto 
him. The matter is he hath lyen too long abroad, 
as you do know, without lodging, in the streets of 
London, both hungry, naked, and cold. Sir, there 
is a wide large house of the King's Majesty's called 
Bridewell, that would wonderful well serve to lodge 
Christ in, if he might find such good friends in the 
court as would procure in his cause. There is a rumour 
that one goeth about to buy that house of the King's 
Majesty and to pull it down. If there be any such 
thing, for God's sake speak in our master's cause. — 
Yours in Christ, Nic. London." 

This scheme, which should have been productive 
of so much good, did not turn out at all satisfactorily. 
Like many charitable objects, it became the victim of 
systematic fraud : the idle and the vicious crowded 
out the needy and deserving, and many are the edicts 
of the Common Council against the " master -less men " 
who resorted hither. Not having, apparently, been 
sufficiently endowed, it became a serious expense to the 
citizens, who, perhaps, hoped to recoup themselves by 
turning a portion of the buildings into storehouses for 
^ It is quoted by Froude, from the Lansdowne MSS. 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

corn and coal — a scheme first proposed in 1579, and 
actually carried into effect in 1608.^ 

In the Great Fire, Bridewell was entirely destroyed. 
What its outlines had been can be seen in Agas's 
" Plan " (1560), although as, there, its elevation is not 
so imposing or so large as shown in Wyngaerde's earlier 
" View " (1543), it is probable that when turned into 
a hospital some superfluous portions were demolished. 

Old Bridewell extended from about half-way up 
what is now Bridge Street to the water's edge ; but when 
it was rebuilt (in 1668) after the fire, the new structure 
only occupied about half of the space formerlj' covered, 
and was erected on the northern portion of the original 
site ; although it was naturally much more conveniently 
arranged, and, so far as it went, even more imposingly 
built. 

The place had a dual object : the incarceration of 
disorderly and idle persons, and the reception of the 
needy and helpless. Hatton, in his New View ofLondoii 
(1708), gives the following description of its aims : — 

"It is a prison and house of correction for idle 
vagrants, loose and disorderly servants, night-walkers, 
etc. These are set to hard labour, and have correction 
according to their deserts ; but have their clothes 
and diet during their imprisonment at the charge 
of the house. It is also an hospital for indigent 
persons, and where twenty art-masters (as they are 
called), being decayed traders, — as shoemakers, taylors, 
flax-drapers, etc., — have houses, and their servants 
or apprentices (being about 140 in all) have clothes 
at the house charge, and their masters, having the 
profit of their work, do often advance by this means 
their own fortunes. And these boys, having served 

1 References to the storage at Bridewell, in 1612 and 1624, will be 
found in the Remembrancia. 

67 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

their time faithfully, have not only their freedom, 
but also £10 each towards carrying on their respective 
trades ; and many have even arrived from nothing 
to be governors." 

Kip's " View " of Bridewell, dated 1720, gives us 
as good an idea of the building as does Hatton's 
description of its internal regulations. It was formed 
in two large quadrangles, the chief of which faced 
the Fleet Stream, now Bridge Street. Additions were 
made after Kip's time, however, and by these, fresh 
prisons and a committee - room were formed ; the 
chapel was also rebuilt, and the whole place recon- 
structed, so as to form but a single quadrangle, having 
a large entrance to Bridge Street, over which was set 
up a carved head of Edward vi. 

Eighteenth-century literature contains many refer- 
ences to the flogging, beating hemp, and oakum- 
picking, which formed the chief punishments at Bride- 
well in those days. Congreve and Shad well and Pope 
have all referred to the place and its denizens, and 
in the fourth plate of " The Harlot's Progress " 
Hogarth has for ever translated its shameful horrors 
through the medium of his instructive art. 

In later times Bridewell was used as a place of 
detention and correction for such offenders as had 
been sentenced by the City magistrates to terms of 
imprisonment not exceeding three months ; and it 
had become united with Bethlehem Hospital and the 
House of Occupation, all three being placed under 
the same governing body. In 1842, there were con- 
fined here 1324 persons, 466 of whom were known 
or suspected thieves. Mr. Hepworth Dixon, in his 
London Prisons, gives a dismal picture of the place : 
" As a House of Correction for criminals it could 
hardly be worse," he says. " The building itself is 
68 



STREETS SOUTH OF FLEET STREET 

bad and, as it stands upon a cold damp soil, it is 
far from healthy. In wet weather the doors have 
water trickling down them, and the air is quite humid. 
Then the prisoners' apartments are small and strag- 
gling . . . the whole is so ill arranged that no sort of 
superintendence, worthy of the name, can possibly be 
maintained." Howard, at a much earlier date, had 
found the place in a very similar condition. Indeed, 
the remedy it offered for vice seems to have been little 
better than the disease. 

When, therefore, Holloway Jail was erected in 
1863, and the materials of Bridewell sold and its site 
cleared, London saw the end of an institution which 
had only its age and the memories of its predecessor 
to recommend it. The chapel was pulled down in 
1871, but certain portions of the frontage to Bridge 
Street, notably the gateway (No. 14), were allowed 
to remain. 

As may be supposed, in the case of such a place 
as Bridewell, those who have been immured here 
were rather notorious than noteworthy. But there 
are one or two associations of the latter character : 
for instance, Johnson's servant, Robert Levett, was 
interred in the burial-ground attached to Bridewell 
in 1732 ; Thomas Ell wood, the Quaker, and friend 
of Milton, was taken to Bridewell in 1661, and in his 
Autobiography gives several interesting particulars of 
the place as it was in those days ; and even earlier, 
in 1567, certain members of the early Congregational 
Church were committed to prison here, headed by 
their pastor, Richard Fitz. But these are exceptions, 
the rule being to find here such people as the notorious 
Mrs. Creswell of Charles ii.'s day, or those ' Bridewell 
Boys ' who, in the following century, became a nuis- 
ance to peaceful citizens, and a standing proof of the 

69 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

inefFicacy of the system employed in this ' house of 
correction.' ^ 

To-day, the site of Bridewell is occupied by a con- 
geries of streets and buildings whose interest solely 
rests on the fact that they stand where once stood 
the palace of our kings, and where at least an attempt 
was, later, made to deal, however inefficiently as it 
has been proved, with crime and idleness. ^ 

^ The place was once known as ' Lob's Pound ' ; though the origin 
of this term seems lost, unless Lob means, as it does in some dialects, 
a clown or booby. 

2 A good idea of the interior of the apartment called the ' Pass 
Room ' in Bridewell can be gained from the picture by Pugin and 
Rowlandson, which illustrates a short notice of the place in Acker- 
mann's Microcosm of London. 



70 



CHAPTER III 

STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

The chief characteristic of the north side of Fleet Street 
is the number of small courts and alleys which, at one 
time, were to be found there. Some of these have now 
disappeared, like the famous Johnson's Court, which 
was absorbed in Anderton's Hotel ; some were but 
means of access to larger areas behind the houses in 
the main thoroughfare, and have become obliterated 
in the course of building developments ; not a few, 
however, still remain, and it is in these exiguous outlets 
that one can, here and there, best gain an approximate 
idea of what Fleet Street must have looked like to our 
forefathers. Indeed, there is not much remaining in 
the thoroughfare itself capable of carrying our minds 
back to earlier days, so greatly ha,ve its picturesque 
features been changed into later and more regular 
building lines. 

In the last chapter we left Fleet Street at St. Bride's 
Lane, so that it will be convenient to begin our per- 
ambulation of the north side of the thoroughfare at 
the opposite corner, where, at No. 108, we find Black 
Horse Alley, clearly marked in Hollar's Exact Siir- 
veigh, dated 1667. 

This court dates back to Jacobean times, and is 
found specifically mentioned in the year 1618. Ex- 
cept, however, for its antiquity, it is not particularly 

71 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

notable ; nor does the fact that, about the middle of the 
eighteenth century, a group of eight houses, either 
actually in it or close by. were called the ' Devil's 
Nook,' predispose us to regard it as a noticeably 
respectable quarter. At the commencement of the 
nineteenth century, John McCreery, who wrote a poein 
on " The Press," here had his printing establishment ; 
while in the same building, on the ground floor, was 
the office of the News Exchange. 

Next to Black Horse Alley was Poppin's, or, as 
Horwood calls it, Popping's Court, on the site of No. 
109 Fleet Street. Hollar, in his Exact Siirveigh, spells 
it Papinger Alley. It takes its name from the ' Poppin- 
gaye,' the inn or hostel of the Abbot of Cirencester,^ 
from which circumstance the place was called, in 
Elizabeth's time, ' Poppinggay Alley ' ; and in our own 
day, a successor, in the modern ' Popinjay,' has arisen 
on its site. 2 

A few paces west bring us to Racquet Court (No. 
114), about which the only item of interest that has 
survived, is the fact that it was here, in 1721, that 
Dennis Connel was killed in a duel by Thomas Wicks. 

Shoe Lane, on the other hand, is a very im- 
portant tributary of the main stream. The earliest 
mention we have of this ancient street is in the thir- 
teenth century, w^hen it was known as Showell Lane.^ 
It is not recorded from whom or what this title was 
taken, but it seems probable that it was derived from 
the name of an early owner of land hereabouts. 
Not long, however, did it preserve this designation, 

1 Noble. 

^ In 1870, the north side of Poppin's Court was cut off, when the 
street from Holborn Circus to Ludgatc Circus was formed. 

3 See MS, note in the Kensington Library copy of London Past and 
Present. 

72 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

for in the year 1310, we find it referred to as Scolane 
in a writ sent to the City by Edward ii. which recites 
that " you cause to come before us, or the person 
holding our place, at the church of St. Brigit without 
Ludgate, on the Saturday next after the Feast of the 
Translation of St Thomas the Martyr, eighteen good 
and lawful men of the venue of Scolane in the ward 
without Ludgate ; to make inquisition on oath as to 
a certain tenement with its appurtenances in Scholane, 
which the Abbot of Rievaulx is said to have appro- 
priated without leave of our Lord the King," etc. 
Apparently no notice was taken of this by the City 
authorities, nor do we know the result of a similar 
command, sent on the following 10th of October. Two 
references to the lane occur in the reign of Edward iii. : 
one in 1345, when a certain Thomas de Donyngtone 
is condemned to be hanged for theft here ; and the 
other in 1347, when John Tournour of Sholane is 
ordered to stamp his name on his wine measures, and 
to construct them of " dried wood." ^ 

An early and notable resident was the Bishop of 
Bangor, who, in 1378, had his Inn on the west side of the 
street, a residence used by various occupants of the 
See till 1647. In Wyngaerde's " Plan " (1543) this Inn 
may, I think, be recognised in the gabled building, a few 
doors up on the west side, which is distinguished by 
its superior size from its neighbours. It is also in- 
dicated by Agas {circa 1560), who calls the street 
Schow Lane. 

In the Patent Rolls is the following entry, dated 48 
Edward iii. (1375), referring to this property : " Rex 
amortizarit Epo Bangoren', in successione unum 
Messuag : unam placeam terrae, ac unum gardinum 
cum aliis sedificiis, in Shoe Lane, London." The 

^ Riley's Memorials of London. 

73 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

position of this Episcopal Inn was for long indicated 
by a small alley known as Bangor Court. The last 
Bishop who occupied the place was Doulben, who died 
here on Nov. 27, 1633. Fourteen years later, the 
reversion of the property, with the ' waste ground ' 
attached, comprising an area of 168 feet in length by 
144 in breadth,^ was purchased from the Trustees for 
the sale of Bishops' Lands, by Sir John Barkstead, for 
the purpose of erecting tenements thereon. Li 1657, 
when an Act of Parliament was passed to prevent new 
buildings, an exception was made in Sir John's case, 
because, as it was pointed out, he had given more for 
the property than he otherwise would have done, 
" the place being both dangerous and noisome to the 
passengers and inhabitants near adjoining," in view of 
developing it. Apparently, however, Barkstead after 
all did not build, as we find the property reverting to 
the See of Bangor in 1660. A portion of the garden 
belonging to the Lm, containing a rookery (of birds, 
not of tumble-down houses) and some lime trees, re- 
mained here till 1759 ; and a part of the original house 
was in existence down to 1828, when, in consequence 
of an Act passed two years earlier, again enabling the 
See to sell the property, this last relic was cleared 
away. Later, Bentley's printing-offices occupied its 
site. 

On the opposite side of Shoe Lane stood an old 
mansion known as Oldbourne Hall, which Stow men- 
tions as being " letten out in divers tenements " 
even in his far-off day. Fleet Market practically 
covered all this spot, from the time of its being opened, 
1737, to the year 1829, when it was, in its turn, done 
away with, to make room for Farringdon Street. 

In the Domestic State Pajyci's is a reference to a 

1 Brayley's Londiniana. 

74 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

messuage called the ' Crown,' in Shoe Lane, in the 
form of a lease dated Oct. 11, 1630, from Mary Allanson 
to Thomas Beadle of Shoe Lane. This property, 
from its name, was probably situated in Rose and 
Crown Court, about half-way up on the east side of 
the street. 

Among notable inhabitants in Shoe Lane, appears 
to have been John de Critz, the serjeant painter to 
James i. and Charles i. ; although at one period of his 
sojourn in this country he is known to have lived in 
Austin Friars. Florio, who compiled A Worlde of 
Words, and translated Montaigne^ s Essays, once owned 
a house here which is mentioned in his will, but he 
himself died at Fulham in 1625. Later (1676), ' Praise- 
God ' Barebone rented a dwelling here for which he 
paid £25 per annum. At this time he was eighty years 
old, and he died three years later. 

Richard Whitehead, the manufacturer of mathe- 
matical instruments, and, according to a record in 
the Sloane MSS.,^ " the best workman we ever had 
in England," died in Shoe Lane in 1694 ; and Chatter- 
ton, who put an end to his brilliantly meteoric career 
in a garret in Brooke Street in 1770, was interred in 
the paupers' burial - ground which existed here till 
it was done away with to form Farringdon Market. 
Another poet who fell on bad times and came to a 
starving condition, Samuel Boyce, died in this street 
in 1749. 

Shoe Lane was almost as busy a trade centre in the 
seventeenth century as it is to-day, and from that 
period a number of tokens have come down to us. 
Among these I find, in Akerman, the following : 
Jeremy Bucher, at Shoe Lane End, smoker (probably 
a bacon-curer) ; Ann Castree. at the ' Five Bells ' ; 

^ Bagford Sloane MS., iio6, fol. 14. 

75 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Robert Hiscock, at the ' Last ' ; John Payne, meal- 
man, 1669 ; Nicholas Rowe, 1669 ; and Thomas Seele ; 
while one was issued from Foimtaine Court in Shew 
Lane, 1659, and one from the ' Cross Keys,' in the 
thoroughfare itself. Burn, in his account of the 
Beaufoy Tokens, also gives one of the Mansfield Coffee- 
House, in the lane. On the obverse is a hand holding 
a coffee-pot ; and on the reverse the words : " in Shoe 
Lane by Providence." This was one of the tokens 
issued on the re-opening of such places after the 
Great Fire. 

The lane had a number of smaller streets and 
alleys leading from it, and among those on the east 
side were : Ben Jonson's Court, Fountain Court, Harp 
Alley, Gunpowder Alley, Currier's Alley, Stone-Cutters' 
Street, Rose and Crown Court, and George Alley. 
One or two of these seem to indicate the presence in 
them of some particular class of artisans : one, Ben 
Jonson's Court, ^ may be more intimately connected 
with the great dramatist than one has now any 
record of ; another. Harp Alley, is closely associated 
with the manufacture of signboards, of which there 
was a regular market here in those days. Formerly, 
Harp Alley connected Shoe Lane with Farringdon 
Street, but to-day it is cut off by St. Bride's Street. 
It was here that Izaak Walton used to buy " choice 
hooks " at Charles Kerbye's, who was, to quote the 
gentle angler, " the most exact hooke maker that the 
nation affords." On the west side of Shoe Lane was 
Globe Court, King's Head Court, Gunpowder Alley, 
and New Street ; and it was in Gunpowder Alley 
that Richard Lovelace died in 1658, and here also 
resided Evans, the astrologer, known to readers of 

^ At No. 3, the Ben Jonson Tavern had a portrait of the poet as a 
sign. 

76 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

Lilly's autobiography.^ The northern end of Shoe 
Lane does not concern us here, but it is interesting 
to remember that it Avas in St. Andrew's Church, 
at its north-west corner, that Benjamin D'Israeli was 
baptized at the age of twelve, on July 31, 1817. 

Before leaving Shoe Lane, I must not forget to 
mention the existence there of a cockpit which seems 
to have been affected by all sorts and conditions of 
people. For instance, we find the grave Sir Henry 
Wotton recording his having been there on June 3, 
1633, — although he certainly says that he was a rara 
avis in such a place, — while on Dec. 21, 1663, the 
ubiquitous Pepys paid the place a visit, and a pretty 
mixed company he found there. Hear what he says : — 

" To Shoe Lane to see a cocke-fighting at a new 
pit there, a spot I was never at in my life : but Lord ! 
to see the strange variety of people, from Parliament 
man by name Wildes, that was Deputy Governor of 
the Tower when Robinson was Lord Mayor, to the 
poorest 'prentices, bakers, brewers, butchers, draymen, 
and what not, and all these fellows one with another 
cursing and betting. I soon had enough of it." 

Next to Shoe Lane is Peterborough Court, so 
called because the Inn of that See was situated on its 
west side, the gardens of which are shown in Ogilby's 
" Plan." It adjoined what is now the office of the Daily 
Telegraph, No. 136 Fleet Street, and in it, in 1727, 
a parish workhouse was opened. Here, too, Walter 
Scott, a plasterer, carried on his business, and on his 
death, in 1786, bequeathed a sum of money for the 
foundation of a blue-coat school in his native town 

1 One of the six people who are reported to have perished in the 
Great Fire was Paul Lowell, a watchmaker in Shoe Lane, who said 
he was eighty years of age, and would never desert his house here, in 
consequence of which he was burned to death inside it. 

77 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

of Ross.^ At the east corner of the court was a shop 
where was sold Hertner's ' Eupyrion,' the predecessor 
of the lucifer match ; and nearly opposite were the 
works of Jacob Perkins, who exhibited his steam-gun 
at the Adelaide Gallery in the Strand.^ Earlier in 
the eighteenth century, James Taylor, a merchant, had 
his business here. 

Of Wine Office Court, to which we next come, 
I have something to say when speaking of the ' Cheshire 
Cheese,' which adjoins it, and also when referring to 
Goldsmith,^ who once lived at No. 6, and who has 
made it for ever famous by writing the Vicar of Wake- 
field here. The fig tree once in this court, planted by 
the vicar of St. Bride's, was a slip taken from another 
tree once growing a,t the ' Fig-Tree ' in Fleet Street — 
the parent stem from which various cuttings w^ere 
culled. Two merchants, Mr. Jekyll and Mr, Markum, 
are given in the Little London Directory for 1677 as 
having their offices in this court. 

Hind Court, between Wine Office Court and 
Bolt Court, is shown in Ogilby's " Plan " of 1677 and 
in Horwood's " Map " of 1799 ; it was a cul-de-sac, 
and has no interesting associations. 

Bolt Court, a few doors farther west, on the con- 
trary, is one of the most interesting of Fleet Street's 
byways, for, intimately as Dr. Johnson was associated 
wii.n the neighbourhood, no spot, save perhaps Gough 
Square, is quite so closely connected with his towering 
figure. It was in 1776 that he came (from Johnson's 
Court) into residence at No. 8, on the right-hand side 
from Fleet Street, and here he remained till the end of 
his life, paying a rental of £40 per annum. Boswell 

1 Noble. 

2 Timbs, Walks and Talks about London. 
^ In the chapter on ' Famous Men.' 

78 



M0^ 




DR. JOHNSON S IIOUSP:, HOLT COURT. 



To face page 79. 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

tells us how, coming from Scotland, he hastened the 
next morning (March 16, 1776) to Johnson's Court, only 
to find that his hero had flitted to his new abode ; and 
he sets down his reflections on the circumstance. Again, 
on April 3, he found Johnson in Bolt Court, " ver}^ busy 
putting his books in order ; and as they were generally 
very old ones, clouds of dust were flying around him. 
He had on a pair of large gloves such as hedgers use." 
In fact, his appearance reminded Boswell of his uncle's 
description of the Doctor : " a robust genius, born to 
grapple with whole libraries." 

In 1784, a youth might have been seen convers- 
ing at Johnson's door with Barber, Johnson's black 
servant ; after some colloquy, he handed a packet 
to the domestic, and was asked to call again in a 
week. It was Isaac D'Israeli ^ leaving a poem for the 
Doctor's consideration. When he called again, he was 
told that Johnson was too ill to see him, and on Dec. 13, 
1784, the great Lexicographer had ceased to breathe. 

It was in Bolt Court that Johnson ran that curious 
menage in which Mrs. Williams and his other pensioners 
were continually at loggerheads. " We have tolerable 
concord at home," writes Johnson to Mrs, Thrale, 
on Nov. 14, 1778, " but no love. Williams hates 
everybody. Levett hates Desmoulines, and does not 
love Williams. Desmoulines hates them both. Poll 
loves none of them." And later he says : " Discord and 
discontent reign in my humble habitation as in the 
palaces of monarchs." 

Here Johnson watered his garden, and did much of 
his mighty work, and received such friends as Howard 
the philanthropist and Mrs. Siddons. Once, when the 
latter called, and a chair was not immediately forth- 

1 Rogers some years earlier had called on the Doctor, but he never 
got beyond the doorstep, as fear suddenly made him run away. 

79 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

coming, Johnson remarked, " You see. Madam, wherever 
you go there are no seats to be got." Could Chesterfield 
have made a better use of the circumstance ? 

There is a good view of the house in Bolt Court, 
in Croker's (1835) edition of Boswell, drawn and en- 
graved by C. J. Smith, and a representation of the 
Doctor's sitting-room, from a sketch by J. Smith. 
The latter shows a good-sized room panelled to the 
ceiling, and in it the great Lexicographer is repre- 
sented sitting in familiar discourse with Boswell. 
Miss Hawkins, in her Memoirs, also speaks of the 
" decent drawing-room . . . not inferior to others in 
the same local situation, and with stout, old-fashioned 
mahogany table and chairs." 

Among other residents in Bolt Court, was James 
Ferguson, the Scotch astronomer, who also painted 
portraits (he died at No. 4 on Nov. 16, 1776) ; while 
Cobbett published his Register at No. 11, where, I 
believe, he once kept the large gilt gridiron he had had 
made for a sign, but which was never actually set up. 
This gridiron, as well as the woodcut of one which 
for long headed his Political Registers, was an allusion 
to Cobbett's acknowledged readiness to be roasted 
alive if ever Peel's Cash Payments Bill passed into law. 
On Sept. 24, 1819, he solemnly announced that " I, 
William Cobbett, assert that to carry their bill into 
effect is impossible ; and I say that if this bill be carried 
into full effect, I will give Castlereagh leave to lay me 
on a gridiron, and broil me alive, while Sidmouth may 
stir the coals, and Canning stand by and laugh at my 
groans." 

In 1858, Johnson's one-time residence was pur- 
chased by the Stationers' Company for conversion 
into a school. Nine thousand pounds were spent on this 
scheme, each boy being obliged to pay six shillings 
80 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

quarterly. Two years later, the then Master of the 
Company (Edward Foss) inaugurated a school fund, by 
a contribution of one hundred guineas, and another 
Master (Edmund Hodgson) founded a university 
scholarship. Noble conjectures that the school play- 
ground had probably been Johnson's garden. 

In the house next to Johnson's, Edmund Allen, his 
friend, had his printing-office. This house, then being 
in the occupation of Bensley, the printer, was burned 
down in 1819, which was apparently the cause of 
the general, bat erroneous, idea that No. 8 had met 
the same fate. In the twenties of the nineteenth 
century, a ' Dr. Johnson's Tavern ' was started in 
Bolt Court, being succeeded by the Albert Club, and 
here the so-called 'Lumber Troop' held their 
meetings. Noble tells us that the qualification for 
membership of the Troop, was a small payment and 
the drinking of a quart of beer at a draught ! 

Maitland describes Bolt Court, together with 
Johnson's Court, as having, in 1739, " good houses, 
well inhabited," and in those times they were certainly 
very different in appearance and association from 
what they are to-day ; even the neighbouring Gough 
Square being termed fashionable by the topographer. 
Johnson's Court does not, of course, take its name 
from the great Doctor who once lived in it, and who, 
on a certain occasion, laughingly described himself as 
" Johnson of that Ilk." The family, after a member 
of whom it was probably named, was long and honour- 
ably associated with Fleet Street. Indeed, in Eliza- 
beth's day a certain Dr. Johnson is recorded as resid- 
ing here. Another, Thomas Johnson, " citizen and 
merchant tailor," was a member of the Common Council 
from 1598 till his death in 1626, and was, besides, a 
benefactor to the parish. His wife was buried in St. 
F 81 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Dunstan's Church on April 30, 1622, as appears by 
the Register. Lord Berkeley is recorded as lodging at 
the house of Thomas Johnson in the sixteenth century ; 
while, as referring more particularly to that part of 
Fleet Street associated with the family name, we 
read, in the St. Dunstan's Burial Register for 1647, 
" out of Mr. Johnson's Court, in Fleet Street." 

It is, however, with their eighteenth-century name- 
sake that Johnson's Court is most intimately connected, 
for here Dr. Johnson lived from 1765 to 1776, at No. 7, 
" a good house," according to Boswell, and here he 
wrote his Tour to the Hebrides, published his Shake- 
speare and a new edition of the Dictionary, and, among 
many other lesser works, wrote the prologue to Gold- 
smith's Good-Natured Man. 

Many are the references to the place in Bos well's 
gossiping pages. Thus in 1766 he writes : " I re- 
turned to London in February, and found Dr. Johnson 
in a good house in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, in 
which he had accommodated Miss Williams with an 
apartment on the ground floor, while Mr. Levett 
occupied his post in the garret ; his faithful Francis 
was still attending upon him ; " and again : " Mr. 
Beauclerk and I called on him in the morning. As we 
walked up Johnson's Court, I said, ' I have a veneration 
for this court,' and was glad to find that Beauclerk had 
the same reverential enthusiasm." 

According to Hawkins, Johnson worked in an 
upstairs room " which had the advantages of a good 
light and free air " ; this " he had fitted up for a study 
and furnished with books, chosen with so little regard 
to editions or their external appearances, as shewed 
they were intended for use, and that he disdained the 
ostentation of learning." 

From Johnson's Court the Doctor went, as we have 
82 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

seen, to Bolt Court, still keeping to his favourite Fleet 
Street, as Boswell notes. 

It was [in Johnson's Court ^ that Theodore Hook 
began the publication of his newspaper John Bull, 
in 1820. 

We must make a detour to Gough Square, which 
lies behind Bolt Court and Johnson's Court, and can 
be entered from the former. Here again Johnson is 
the presiding genius, for here, at No. 17, he lived, in 
the house which is the chief Mecca of his admirers, 
from 1748 to 1758. Two years after his arrival, he 
began the publication of the Eamhler here ; here, in 
1752, his wife died ; and here, three years later, he 
completed his great Dictionary. This house has since 
1885 borne one of the Society of Arts tablets ; and 
recently, owing to the generosity of Mr. Cecil Harms- 
worth, it has been secured as a permanent museum 
of the illustrious man whose spirit seems still to haunt 
it. Boswell's description of the literary workroom is 
historic : — 

" Mr. Burney," he writes, " had an interview with 
him in Gough Square, where he dined and drank tea 
with him, and was introduced to the acquaintance of 
Mrs. Williams. After dinner Mr. Johnson proposed 
to Mr. Burney to go up with him into his garret, 
which, being accepted, he there found about five or 
six Greek folios, a deal writing-desk, and a chair and 
a half. Johnson gave to his guest the entire seat, and 
tottered himself on one with only three legs and one 
arm." 

It was in this garret that Johnson's amanuenses 
sat labouring under his dictation at the Dictionary ; 
here it was that Johnson himself was arrested for a 
debt of £5, 18s. in March 1756, a debt discharged 

^ Hutton says Gough Square. 

83 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

by Samuel Richardson ; Reynolds brought Roubiliac 
hither, and Northcote tells how the Doctor received his 
guests " with much civility, and took them up into a 
garret, which he considered as his library ; where, 
besides his books, all covered with dust, there was an 
old crazy deal table and a still worse and older elbow 
chair, having only three legs." It was, I presume, on 
this occasion that Roubiliac preferred his request that 
the Doctor should write an epitaph for one of his monu- 
ments, and prefaced it with so much fulsome adula- 
tion that Johnson cut him short with, " Have done, 
Sir, with this ridiculous bombastic rhodomontade ! " 

In 1831, Carlyle paid a visit to the shrine, and has 
left us an account of the amusing remarks, concerning 
Johnson, of the then occupant. 

Another inhabitant in Gough Square was Hugh 
Kelly, who died here in 1777, and who, from being a 
staymaker's apprentice, became a successful dramatist. 
It was of Kelly that Johnson once said : " He was so 
fond of displaying on his sideboard the plate which 
he possessed, that he added to it his spurs ! " 

Noble tells a curious anecdote of a surgeon who lived 
in the square, at No. 3. He purchased the body of a 
malefactor hanged at Tyburn, and brought it to his 
house. In the evening, his servant -m.aid, impelled by 
morbid curiosity, went to the room where the body had 
been laid, and was horrified to find the corpse sitting up 
on the dissecting table. The surgeon thereupon made 
arrangements for sending the man to America, There he 
succeeded in amassing a fortune, which he bequeathed 
to his benefactor. The latter died intestate, but a next 
of kin was discovered, by a lawyer, in the person of 
a shoemaker at Islington. The shoemaker, however, 
refused to pay the lawyer's bill, whereupon the latter 
set about to find, if possible, another nearer of kin, which 
84 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

he succeeded in doing, the heir this time being Wilcox, 
the Strand bookseller, who had first befriended Johnson 
and Garrick when they came to London from Lich- 
field. 

It is not, I think, generally remembered that a 
place of worship stood in Gough Square. This structure, 
called Trinity Church, was erected in 1827 as a chapel 
of ease to St. Bride's. The first stone was laid on the 
3rd of October by the then Lord Mayor (Thomas Kelly), 
and the edifice was consecrated by the Bishop of London 
on the following 21st of June. The architect was John 
Shaw, who designed it in the Anglo-Norman style ; and, 
from an engraving of it in Godwin and Britten's Churches 
of London, a very ugly building it was. The ground on 
which it stood, a corner site, was given by the Gold- 
smiths' Company, to whom property here had been left 
for charitable purposes by a widow named Harding in 
1513 (Harding Street takes its name from this benefi- 
cent lady). In 1842, the extra parochial district of 
Whitefriars was added to Trinity Church. The church 
was faced with bright yellow bricks, so that, as it was 
in the Anglo-Norman stj^le, a style wholly identified 
with stone, its incongruousness was patent. It had a 
tower 80 feet high. 

Gough Square is jointly in the parishes of St. Dun- 
stan's and St. Bride's, and it is recorded that the former 
claimed two houses in it, on the strength of having 
buried a body found on the spot where they joined. 

Returning to Fleet Street, and passing two small 
courts, St. Dunstan's Court and Morecroft Court, both 
shown by Ogilby in 1677, as not having any interesting 
associations, we come to Red Lion Court (No. 169), 
probably taking its name from the Red Lion Tavern, 
which stood close by. This alley has always been 
rather notable for its connection with printing, for 

85 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

here was, at the ' Cicero's Head,' ^ once the press of 
Messrs. Nichols & Sons, where, in 1779-81, the Gentle- 
man's Magazine was partly printed, and, from 1792- 
1820, entirely issued. ^ Richard Taylor, a man of note 
in his day, who died at Richmond in 1858, also had his 
printing establishment here, and later the offices of the 
South London Press, under the editorship of James 
Henderson, occupied a position in Red Lion Court. 

In connection with Taylor, it is interesting to 
remember that Richard Jefferies' grandfather, John 
Jeff eries, worked for him here. Indeed, Richard Jefferies' 
association with Red Lion Court is still closer, for his 
father married, in 1844, Elizabeth Gyde, daughter of 
Chd^es Gyde of Islington, who had a bookbinder's 
business at No. 7^ Red Lion Court, Gyde having been 
a colleague of Richard's grandfather in Taylor's firm.^ 

Crane Court, or, as Strype calls it, Two Crane Court, 
a cul-de-sac, is a few paces farther west, at No. 175 
Fleet Street. Its most famous past inhabitant was that 
Dr. Nicholas Barebone, the great builder who had so 
nmch to do with the development of the streets on the 
Norfolk and Buckingham estates in the Strand, and 
who is further honourably remembered as the in- 
augurator of the Phoenix Life Insurance. He was the 
son of ' Praise-God ' Barebone, who had a leather- 
seller's shop, known by the sign of the " Lock and 
Key,' near Crane Court, and he is said to have 
been christened ' If -Jesus -Christ -had -not -died -for - 
thee - thou - hadst - been - damned - Barebone,' which 
became almost inevitably shortened into ' Damned 
Barebone.' Dr. Barebone was in his way as extra- 

^ Gibbon mentions it in a letter to Lord Sheffield, but terms the 
locality Red Lion Passage. 
2 Noble. 
^ See Thomas's Life of Jefferies. . . , 

86 



r "ft 



'I 




'^ -^^^^"tm^i 



HOUSK IN CRANE COURT, OCCUl'IliD KV 11 i K KOYAL SOCIETY. 

Tofuccpagc 87. 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

ordinary a man as his father had been before him. 
He must have made vast sums during his career, in 
the many ventures he embarked upon ; but, on the 
other hand, he lost heavily in others, and died in debt. 
He exhibited his last flash of eccentricity by ordering 
his executor, John Asgill, never to pay his creditors. 

The house occupied by Barebone in Crane Court, 
which Strype says was larger than the rest, being 
ascended by large stone steps, was rebuilt by Wren in 
1670, and just forty years later we find it in the posses- 
sion of Dr. Edward Browne, the son of Sir Thomas 
Browne, and President of the College of Physicians, from 
whom the Royal Society purchased it, for £1450, in that 
year. Newton was President of the Royal Society at 
this time, and he was wont to describe the building 
as being very suitable for recondite deliberations, as 
it was " in the middle of town, and out of noise." In 
1711, the year after the Society had taken possession, 
one of its secretaries, Richard Waller, built a museum 
in the garden attached to the house, and here was stored 
the collection of curiosities subsequently (1781) pre- 
sented to the British Museum. This date marks the 
period when the Royal Society left Crane Court, ^ it 
having continued there for upwards of seventy years. 
Later, the Philosophical Society rented the large 
room, and here Coleridge delivered his lectures on 
Shakespeare, in 1819-20. The Scottish Corporation 
occupied the house subsequently, and it is noted as 
doing so by Noble, in 1869. In 1877, however, the 
building was destroyed by fire." 

It was in Crane Court that Dryden Leach, the 
printer, lived ; and it was from here that he was 

1 Among Sir C. Hanbury Williams's jeux d'esprit are several 
references to Crane Court as the meeting-place of the philosophers. 
^ It was rebuilt from the designs of Mr. T. L. Donaldson, architect. 

87 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

arrested (being taken out of his bed in the middle of 
the night) on suspicion of being concerned in the 
printing of Wilkes's famous North Briton, No. 45 — a 
suspicion without any foundation, except the fact 
that Wilkes was known to have visited Leach in 
Crane Court. 

Concanen, a friend of Warburton, also once lodged 
here, and in his room (when being redecorated by 
Dr. Gavin Knight of the British Museum) was found, 
in 1750, a letter he had received from Warburton 
reflecting on Pope, which was subsequently published 
by Akenside in 1766, and caused no end of literary 
trouble. 

Many newspapers have been produced in Crane 
Court : the Commercial Chronicle, the Traveller (at 
No. 9), and the early numbers of Punch were issued 
from here, and here, at No. 10, the Illusiraied London 
News was first printed. 

It is interesting to know that the second circulating 
library ever started in London began its career at 
No. 6 Crane Court, the first having been inaugurated 
at 132 Strand, in 1740. The Crane Court Library, as 
it was called, first issued a catalogue in 1745, by which 
we learn that its terms of subscription were four shill- 
ings a year. The Society of Arts held its first meetings, 
in 1754, at this library. 

Fleur-de-Lis Court, called by Ogilby Flower- 
de-Luce Court, lies between Crane Court and Fetter 
Lane, and has an outlet into the latter on the east 
side, a little south of West Harding Street. It was in 
Fleur-de-Lis Court, it will be remembered, that Mrs. 
Brownrigg murdered her apprentice, Mary Clifford, 
in 1767, for which crime she was hanged at Tyburn 
on September 4 of that year. In the Gentleman's 
Magazine for 1767 there is an account of this atrocious 
88 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

crime, with illustrations showing the kitchen where 
the apprentices were employed, and " the hole under 
the stairs where one of the girls lay, and where both 
were confined on Sundays." Mr. Brownrigg was a 
journeyman printer, and his name appears on the 
petty jury list of St. Dunstan's for 1765. Canning, 
in his " Imitation of Southey," amusingly refers to Mrs. 
Brownrigg : — 

" Dost thou ask her crime ? 



She whipped two female 'prentices to death, 
And hid them in the coal hole. For this act 
Did Brownrigg swing ..." 

The chapel attached to the Scottish Corporation 
(which had its headquarters, as we have seen, in 
Crane Court) was situated at No. 17| Fleur-de-Lis 
Court, ^ and here Coleridge, in 1818, delivered a course 
of lectures on " Language, Literature, and Social and 
Moral Questions." 

Fetter Lane, to which we now come, is a far 
more important tributary of Fleet Street than any 
we have passed, with the possible exception of Shoe 
Lane. Like that thoroughfare, it runs from Fleet 
Street to Holborn, where it debouches slightly to the 
east of Furnival's Inn — or rather, what was once Fur- 
nival's Inn. Only the Fleet Street end properly con- 
cerns us here, however. Tim])s always considered 
that Fetter Lane was in early days the principal 
street in London, although I do not know on what 
grounds he based this rather startling assumption. 

^ Noble notes that, in 1764, upon the evidence of Daniel Truelove 
and Mary Howitt, " William Capey, of Flower-de-Luce Court, milk- 
man, was presented for selling milk by short measure to the detriment 
of the poor." There is a tradition that Dryden once lived in this 
court, but it is not substantiated. 

89 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Stow thus accounts for the name of this street : 
" Then is Fe\vter Lane, which stretcheth south into 
Fleet Street, by the east end of St. Dunstan's Chiu'ch, 
and is so called of fewters (or idle people) lying there, 
as in a way leading to gardens ; but the same is now 
of latter years on both sides built through with many 
fair houses." It is certain that Fetter Lane is not 
only of great antiquity, but also that Stow's assertion 
is probably correct, for a document dated 1363 refers 
to it, being entitled, " De Pecuniis consuetis colli- 
gendis pro emendatione Faytour ^ Lane et Chancellor 
(Chancery) Lane." On the other hand, we find the 
lane, in 1450, described as Frailer Lane, and it is 
just a question whether its present designation may 
not be a false derivative from Frater, which might 
be a plausible and appropriate title for a street so 
close to the purlieus of the learned brethren of the 
law. Certainly, in support of Stow's assertion, there 
were gardens hereabouts, for we read in the docu- 
ment in which the word Fraiter is given of " 1 
Cotag' et 38 gardin' inter Shoe Lane et Fraiter Lane." - 

That idle people congregated in the lane may be 
accounted for on the hypothesis that these gardens 
were then open ground (which is not, I think, satis- 
factorily proved), but it is more likely that, as both 
ends of Fetter Lane were at one time recognised places 
for public execution, these then not infrequent sights 
were sufficient to draw such classes of the community 
hither. 

An early reference to Fetter Lane, dated 1613, 

^ Stow anglicises Faytour or Faitour into Fevvtcr, of course. 
Burn says it took its name from the French vautrier or vauUrier, 
one who leads a lancehound or greyhound for the chase. But I 
cannot follow him in this. 

2 Calendar Inq. P. Mortmain, vol. iv. p. 241. 

90 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

is to be found in the Wardmote Inquest Presentment 
Book of St. Dunstan's^ It is an indictment of one 
" William Pinke of FeAvter Lane," and complains 
that, " Having a private alley to his dwellinge house 
leading oute of Fewter Lane aforesaid, he keepeth 
no gate to the streete, whereby gret harme and annoy- 
ance groweth to the neighbourhood by reason that 
rogues and badd people in the nyght tyme doe hyde 
themselves in that ally, and do breake over into the 
neighbouring grounds and so harme them, wch. we 
hold mete to be reformed." 

This seems to confirm Stow's statement, and, 
in any case, proves that idle and mischievous people 
abounded here, ready to take advantage of any care- 
lessness in the matter of boundaries. 

We gather, from a line in Ben Jonson's Every 
Man out of his Humour, that another class of people 
affected the lane in Elizabethan and Jacobean days, 
namely, pawnbrokers, for Fungoso, in that play, re- 
marks : — 

" Let me see these four angels, and then forty shillings 
more I can borrow upon my gown in Fetter Lane." 

But notable people have also lived here : for in- 
stance, the great family of the Nevills once owned 
property here, perpetuated in Neville's Court ; members 
of another well-known family, the Marshalls, were 
also early inhabitants, as was Lady Saltonstall ; still 
more illustrious was Hobbes of Malmesbury, who once 
resided here, as did the ubiquitous ' Praise-God ' Bare- 
bone ; and probably — for he dates letters hence — the 
great Lord Strafford, who was born in Chancery Lane. 
Whether or not Dryden and Otway, who are said to 
have lived opposite each other here, were really in- 
habitants of Fetter Lane, is a question about which 

1 Quoted by Noble. 

91 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

I have something to say in another chapter.^ Otway 
may probably have been, and possibly Dryden (who 
is traditionally said to have occupied No. 16, at the 
corner of Fleur-de-Lis Comt), but in the latter case 
the fact has never been very satisfactorily established. 

Other residents about whom no doubts exist, were 
John Bagford, the antiquary, who was born here in 
1675 ; Tom Paine, who lived at No. 77 ; and, more 
interesting than either, the immortal Lemuel Gulliver, 
who removed hither from the Old Jewry, and who 
owned the " long lease of the Black Bull in Fetter 
Lane," which brought him in £30 a year. The mention 
of an inn reminds me that the ' White Horse,' a 
great coaching-house for Oxford and the west, men- 
tioned by Lord Eldon, was at the Holborn end of the 
lane. It was on the occasion of Eldon's meeting his 
brother (afterwards Lord Stowell) at this tavern, in 
1766, that they both, failing a hackney carriage, got 
into a sedan-chair and, to quote Eldon's own words : 
" Turning out of Fleet Street into Fetter Lane there 
was a sort of contest between our chairmen and some 
persons who were coming up Fleet Street whether 
they should first pass Fleet Street, or we in our chair 
first get out of Fleet Street into Fetter Lane, In the 
struggle the sedan-chair was overset with us in it." ^ 

It was in Fetter Lane that the Moravian Chapel 
was situated, at No. 32. Here, in 1672, Richard Baxter 
preached and lectured till 1682. " After the indul- 
gence of 1672," we are told, " he returned to the City, 
and was one of the Tuesday lecturers in Pinner's Hall, 
and had a Friday lecture in Fetter Lane (near Neville's 
Court)." Here, later, might have been heard the elo- 
quence and fervour of Wesley and Whitefield. 

1 Chapter VIII., ' Famous Men and Women of Fleet Street.' 

2 Twiss's Life of Eldon, vol. i. p. 49. 

92 




"N 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

This fine old house, which still exists, although 
there are signs, as I write, of its approaching demoli- 
tion, is actually in Neville's Court, a tiny byway between 
Fetter Lane and Great New Street. It is numbered 
10, and when purchased by the Moravians, in 1774, 
was called " the great house in Neville's Alley." It was 
probably erected at the end of the seventeenth century. 
Here C. J. la Trobe, the first Governor of Victoria, was 
born on March 20, 1801, he being the son of the 
musician C. I. la Trobe, who took orders in the Church 
of the United Brethren, and was, in 1795, appointed 
Secretary to that community. 

Neville's Court and Chichester Rents are said to 
take their names from that Ralph Nevill who was 
Bishop of Chichester from 1222 to 1224, although it 
is not proved that he owned the site of either ; yet, as 
he had a residence on the west side of Chancery Lane, 
now Lincoln's Inn, the fact may be as stated. Certainly 
the first name is derived from some member of the 
Nevill family. Other, and older, buildings — I will say 
" till recently," as they are sure to be pulled down 
before I correct my proofs — clustered in this quaint 
corner, which was apparently too insignificant for the 
Great Fire to expend its energy on : notably Nos. 
13, 14, and 15, with their picturesque plastered walls 
and overhanging upper storeys, and particularly their 
pleasant little gardens in front — oases in this wilderness 
of bricks and mortar. 

Another Nonconformist chapel was once in Fetter 
Lane, at No. 96, and was called the Fetter Lane Inde- 
pendent Chapel. Dr. Thomas Goodwin was its first 
minister (from 1660 to 1681), and he was succeeded by 
one Thankful Owen. A later building was erected 
on the site of this chapel in 1732, and at one time its 
services were conducted by the Rev. John Spurgeon, 

93 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

father of the more famous C. H. Spurgeon, and it is 
interesting to find Wesley recording in his Diary for 
June 1737 that he preached here in that month. 

One other interesting fact relating to Fetter Lane 
is that Charles Lamb once went to school, probably in 
1781, at the academy of Mr. Bird, in Bond Stables, the 
passage leading to the thoroughfare from Bartlett's 
Buildings, not quite half-way up the lane on the 
west side. 

There are a number of tradesmen's tokens connected 
with Fetter Lane. Of the dated ones, Akerman gives 
the following : Henry Gibbon, at the ' Falcon,' 1650 ; 
John Smith, at the ' Mermaid,' 1654 ; Robert Tothaker, 
mealman, 1657 ; James Gould, at the ' Cock,' 1664 ; 
William Garratt, 1667; Thomas Poslet, 1667; and 
Clement Willcocks, at the ' White Cross,' 1666 ; while 
there was one issued from the Golden Lyon Tavern, 
in this street. Burn gives a few more — for instance, 
those issued by William Burman, at the ' Chequer ' ; 
Thomas Dutch, at the ' Dog and Ball ' ; and Robert 
Redway, at the ' Lion ' (probably identical with the 
' Golden Lion '). 

The only important turning out of Fetter Lane 
which need concern us is Harding Street, a little way 
up on the east side. About where it opens into Fetter 
Lane is shown in Agas's " Plan " of 1560, and also 
in Hoefnagel's Londinium Feracissimi A^iglice Regni 
Metropolis, of about 1572, an archway spanning the 
main street. It is difficult to say what this represents, 
but the fact that it finds a place in two plans issued 
at an interval of twelve years, indicates that it was a 
permanent erection of some importance. 

Harding Street takes its name from a certain 
widow, Agnes Hardinge, who owned considerable 
property between Fetter Lane and Shoe Lane, in the 
94 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

form of houses and gardens (clearly shown by Agas), 
which she bequeathed, in 1513, to the Goldsmiths' 
Company, " to the intent that they should yearly 
give and pay, weekly for ever, to two poor widows of 
goldsmiths, eightpence each." The amount thus charged 
on the property was £3, 9s. 4d. per annum, but so 
greatly increased in value has the land hereabouts 
become, that something like £600 a year was paid out 
in charity so long ago as 1869 ; besides which, in 
1836, the Company gave a site, near Gough Square, 
for the erection of Trinity Church, as we have seen, 
which site was then valued at £1000, together with an 
additional £500 as an endowment for the building. 

In Notes and Queries ^ is an advertisement which 
reads as follows : Sept. 9, 1669 : " These are to give 
notice that William Sermon, Dr. of Physick, a person 
so eminently famous for his cure of his Grace the 
Duke of Albemarle, is removed from Bristol to London, 
and may be spoken with every day in the forenoon, at 
his house in West Harding Street, in Goldsmith's Rents, 
near Three -Legged Alley, between Fetter Lane and 
Shooe Lane." 

Harding Street is clearly shown in Faithorne 
and Newcourt's " Plan " of 1658 ; while Three-Legged 
Alley, running from Fetter Lane into the south end 
of West Harding Street, is indicated by Ogilby. East 
Harding Street joins New Street, which debouches 
into Shoe Lane, thus forming a connecting link 
between these thoroughfares. Pepys records once 
coming (July 21, 1660) to visit " Mr. Barlow at 
his lodgings at the Golden Eagle in the New Street 
between Fetter Lane and Shoe Lane." 

New Street Square, or, as it seems earlier to 
have been called. New Square, is shown, though not 

^ Vol. ii. p. 439. 

95 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

actually named, in Ogilby's " Plan," and is identical 
with the " brode (broad) place by Newe Streete " 
mentioned by John Childe, the parish clerk of St. 
Bride's, in the Register, as then (October 1666) con- 
taining but sixteen houses left standing after the 
Great Fire. 

A large portion of this area is to-day occupied 
by the well-known printing establishment of Messrs. 
Spottiswoode & Co. 

In Ogilby's " Plan " of 1676, we find four alleys 
shown in Fleet Street, between Fetter Lane and 
Chancery Lane — namely, St. Dunstan's Court, the 
entrance way to Clifford's Inn, Bull Head Court, and 
Flying Horse Court, besides a small cul-de-sac un- 
named. None of these require any particular notice, 
as they are all quite subsidiary outlets from the main 
thoroughfare, having no history beyond the fact 
that they took their names from the buildings or 
taverns on which they abutted, two of which — St. 
Dunstan's Church and Clifford's Inn — are dealt with in 
other chapters. On the other hand. Chancery Lane 
deserves special attention, for it is, in many respects, 
one of the most important lesser thoroughfares of 
London. Always closely associated with the Law, 
as its name indicates, it is further interesting from 
the fact that it joins Fleet Street practically at the 
point where the jurisdiction of the City begins, and 
thus, as it were, runs midway between the east and 
west ends of the Metropolis. It is, besides, a street of 
many memories and, were my limits in this book less, 
might well form the subject of a chapter in itself. 

Chancery Lane was originally known as New Street. 
Concerning the change to the name with which, for 
so many years, this thoroughfare has been identified. 
Stow thus speaks : — 
96 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

" Beyond this Old Temple and the Bishop of 
Lincoln's house is New Street, so called in the reign 
of Henry iii., when he of a Jew's house founded the 
House of Converts, betwixt the Old Temple and the 
New. The same street hath since been called Chancery 
liane, by reason that King Edward iii. annexed the 
House of Converts by patent to the office of Custos 
Rotulorum, or Master of the Rolls." 

Before, however, it was finally designated Chancery 
Lane, the street Avas called for a time Chancellor Lane, 
and probably these two titles were, for long, indifferently 
applied to it ; indeed, we find Strype referring to it as 
"This Chancellor's Lane, now called Chancery Lane," 

Li early days it was, in common with Fleet Street 
and the Strand, a dirty and muddy thoroughfare, and 
in the reign of Edward i. it is said to have been quite 
impassable from these causes ; indeed, at a later date, 
when John Briton, then Custos of London, because of 
its condition caused it to be barred up "to hinder 
any harm that might happen in passing that way," 
an act that did not go uncriticised, some attempt 
was made to improve the main thoroughfare. Chancery 
Lane again came under the notice of the authorities 
in 1614, and we find Sir Julius Caesar rated for the 
paving of the street, at that part " over against the 
gate of the Roles." ^ At this period the west side 
of Chancery Lane was bounded by open fields, with 
a few houses between, and the wall of Lincoln's Inn, 
on which Ben Jonson worked, ran along part of this 
side of the street. On the east were the gardens of 
the Rolls, the Rolls Chapel, and a certain number of 
dwellings growing more numerous as one approached 
Fleet Street. By the year 1658, however, when 
Faithorne and Newcourt published their " Plan," 

1 Lansdowne MS., 163, fol. 134. 

G 97 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Chancery Lane had become as closely built over 
as it is to-day. 

A number of notable people have been connected 
with this street : the families of Caesar, Cecil, Throck- 
morton, Lincoln, once resided here ; and one of the 
old houses (No. 133) which were demolished in 1853, 
and of which Hosmer Shepherd made a drawing, ^ 
bore the arms of Lord Leicester on its front. 

Lord Strafford was born here in 1593 ; so was 
Henry Baker, Defoe's father-in-law, who founded 
the Society of Arts in 1698 ; Isaac Walton lived " in 
what was then the seventh house on the left hand as 
you walk from Fleet Street to Holborn," and paid 
a rent estimated at £31, 10s., in 1638, before he went 
to the west corner of the lane as it debouches into 
Fleet Street. Lord Chief- Justice Hyde, who died in 
1631, was another one-time resident here, and later. 
Lord Keeper North came to live in the same resi- 
dence, " the great brick house near Serjeants' Inn." 
He it was who attempted a betterment in the Lane 
by trying to persuade the inhabitants to join with 
him in paying for a main drain, but their retrograde 
minds could not see the necessity, and it was only 
by enlisting the interests of the Commissioners of 
Sewers that North was able to carry his point, about 
the year 1672. 

Bishop Tillotson, when Dean of Canterbury, Sir 
John Franklin, Sir Edward Reeve, Sir John Trevor, the 
notorious Master of the Robes, who died here in 1717, 
and Sir Richard Fanshawe (at No. 115, in the time of 
Charles ii.) were also former inhabitants, and there 
is even a tradition, handed down by Vertue, that 
Wolsey once lived here " next to the six clerks' office, 
over against the Rolls." 

1 In the Grace Collection. 
98 







'* in' 



OLD HOUSES ON WEST SIDE OF CHANCERY LANE. 

To face pnge 99. 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

Among later residents was Samuel Rose, the friend 
of Cowper, who lived at No. 55 ; Horace Twiss, with 
whom Tom Moore once dined "in a borrowed room, 
with champagne, pewter spoons, and old Lady Cork," 
as he amusingly describes it. Jacob Tonson, the 
famous bookseller, had his first shop near the Fleet 
Street end of the lane, having for his sign the ' Judge's 
Head.' Pickering, the well-known bookseller, was 
once at No. 57, and at No. 115 are the much -frequented 
literary auction rooms of Messrs. Hodgson, which 
firm was originally established at the east corner 
where Messrs. Partridge & Cooper, the stationers, 
are now. 

There was always a large number of taverns in 
Chancery Lane — indeed, from a State Paper dated 1632 
and entitled Touching Ale-Houses in Middlesex, we 
are told that two years previously there were no fewer 
than forty ; but as twenty-five of these were stated to 
be in Sheere (Shire) Lane, and were then suppressed, 
while the remaining fifteen were licensed, it would seem 
that by Chancery Lane was rather meant the sur- 
rounding district than the street itself. We know 
that Pepys affected the ' Pope's Head ' ^ and the 
' Sun ' here, and that Tom Moore used to visit the 
Hole in the Wall Tavern, ^ then kept by Jack Randall, 
alias Nonpareil, to get material for some of his more 
popular poems ; while there must have been many 
other houses of which all traces are lost. 

1 This tavern gave its name to Pope's Head Alley. It was " at 
Pope's Head Alley over against the sign of the ' Horseshoe,' " that was 
sold, in 1663, the story of the Dalleyne family, retold by Waters (W. 
Russell) in his Traditions of London. The Dalleynes were connected 
with a house bearing the ' Sign of the Star,' in Fleet Street. 

2 This sign originated in the hole formerly made in the debtors' 
or other prisons, through which the poor persons received money 
(Larwood and Hotten). 

99 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

The most interesting feature of Chancery Lane is 
undoubtedly the brick Gate-house of Lincoln's Inn, 
which is the most ancient part of that collocation of 
buildings. It was erected by Sir Thomas Lovell in 
1518, which date may be seen upon it. The chambers 
adjoining and overlooking Chancery Lane are of a 
rather later period, and Ben Jonson may possibly 
have had a hand in their erection as we know he had 
in the garden wall. 

As may be seen by one of the Society of Art's 
tablets, Thurloe, Cromwell's secretary, and the com- 
piler of the well-known collection of State Papers, 
had chambers in this part of Lincoln's Inn, from 1645 
to 1659. The State Papers were found by the merest 
chance, in the reign of William iii., in the false ceiling 
of a garret in this part of the building, by a clergyman 
to whom the rooms had been lent during one of the 
long vacations, by their owner, a Mr. Tomlinson. 
The clergyman, who was allowed to annex this ' find,' 
sold the papers to Lord Somers, who had them bound 
in sixty-seven folio volumes. They were subse- 
quently published by Dr. Birch, who is responsible 
for this story — a story, I am bound to say, of which 
the authenticity has been called in question. 

A still more interesting anecdote concerning 
Thurloe's rooms is recorded, for it is said that one 
night Cromwell came hither to discuss with his 
secretary grave and secret matters of state. After 
having dealt with the questions for some time, Crom- 
well suddenly discovered that one of Thurloe's clerks 
was asleep in the room. This clerk was no other 
than Mr. (afterwards Sir) Samuel Morland,^ later to 
be known as a famous mechanician. Cromwell, 

1 See Knightsbridge and Belgravia for some notice of this remarkable 
man. 
100 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

whose subject of discourse had been Sir Richard 
Wilhs's plot for dehvering Charles ii. and his brothers — 
— the Dukes of York and Gloucester — into his power, 
drew his sword and, it is said, would have killed 
Morland, had not Thurloe with some difficulty pre- 
vented him, assuring the furious Protector that his 
intended victim was really asleep. It so happened, 
however, that Morland was only pretending to be, 
and was able to warn the royalists of the intended 
method of snaring the princes, and thus to prevent its 
execution. 1 

The subject of Lincoln's Inn is so large a one, 
and one besides which has been more than once ably 
treated in volumes solely devoted to it, that I must 
content myself with merely thus alluding to its en- 
trance, which, as being in Chancery Lane, properly 
claims a place in these pages. 

There are one or two buildings close by, however, 
which must be noticed. The first, and most important, 
of these is The Record Office, which extends with 
its fore-court from Chancery Lane to Fetter Lane. 
It was begun in 1856, but not finished till 1870, from 
the designs of Mr. (afterwards Sir James) Pennie- 
thorne. It stands on the Rolls Estate, and is admirably 
adapted for the purpose for which it was erected, 
namely, the custody of the inestimably valuable 
series of Records of this Realm which, before its da}'-, 
were housed in such varied centres as the Tower, 
the Chapter House, Westminster, the Rolls Chapel, 
the State Paper Office, and elsewhere. The treasures 
preserved here baffle any attempt at description, but 
they appropriately include Domesday Book and a 
long series of royal charters. Chancery and Exchequer 
records. Treaties (that between Henry viii. and 

1 Timbs, Romance of London, vol. i. p. no. 

101 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Francis i. bearing the gold seal said to have been 
designed by Benvenuto Cellini), and innumerable 
letters, royal and otherwise. 

The Rolls House stands on the site of that Car- 
thusian House for converted Jews, which Henry ii. 
founded in 1233, but which in 1377 was disestab- 
lished when the buildings were handed over to William 
Brustall, the Keeper of the Rolls, which office had 
but recently been created. Since those times, till the 
opening of the Royal Courts of Justice, the Master 
of the Rolls held his court here ; but the building, 
which was designed by Colin Campbell in 1717, and 
since much altered, is now used by the officials of 
the Record Office. The most interesting portion 
of the Rolls Office was the chapel which was ruth- 
lessly destroyed some years ago, a piece of vandalism 
little compensated for by the erection, on its site, 
of a museum which nobody knows ! In it may be seen 
that beautiful monument to Dr. John Young, Master 
of the Rolls under Henry viii., which the great 
Torrigiano produced, and which was by a lucky and 
extraordinary chance not destroyed with the building 
which enshrined it. The recumbent effigy of Dr. Young 
is an exquisite piece of work, and the head of Christ, 
supported on each side by that of a cherub, which 
hovers above it, is full of grace and dignity. 

Another monument which was spared was that 
of Lord Bruce of Kinloss, Master of the Rolls, in the 
reign of James i. The tomb bears the recumbent 
effigy of Lord Bruce, in his robes, his head resting 
on his hand, between two columns, with an inscrip- 
tion stating that he died on Jan. 14, 1610, and some 
Latin verses beneath. 

The third monument is that in memory of Sir 
Richard Allington, of Horscheath, near Cambridge. 
102 




■^ 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

It shows him, his wife, and three children kneeling, 
and as the Latin rhyming inscription says — 

" Haec Monumenta mihi conjurae fidissima struxit." 

Other monuments in the Museum are those of 
Fortescue, Master of the Rolls and the friend of Pope, who 
died in 1749; Sir John Strange, whose epitaph runs — 

" Here lies an honest lawyer, that is — Strange " ; 

and the Sir John Trevor, who was anything but honest, 
and, as Speaker of the House of Commons, had the 
unique experience of pronouncing his own dismissal, 
for bribery and corruption. 

Hatton (1708), who gives an account of these 
memorials and copies the inscriptions in full, states 
that in the Rolls Chapel, prayers and a sermon were 
given every Sunday, and that the then Preacher of 
the Rolls was Dr. Francis Atterbury, Dean of Car- 
lisle, who received £10 a term from the Master of 
the Rolls, which was made up to £100 by the Master 
in Chancery. Besides Atterbury, both Burnet, and 
Butler of the Analogy, were preachers here, the 
former being removed in consequence of a sermon 
he delivered on Nov. 5, 1684, which was regarded 
by the King as being " levelled against his coat of 
arms." Burnet had taken for his text the words, 
" Save me from the lions' mouth, for thou hast heard 
me from the horns of the unicorns." Luttrell, in 
his Diary, thus refers to the incident : " Dr. Burnett, 
preacher at the Rolls Chappell, on the complaint 
of some persons being look'd on as disaffected (tho' 
causelessly), is silenc'd from preaching there." Evelyn 
records hearing him preach an excellent sermon at 
the Rolls, on May 28, 1682. 

It is a curious fact that, notwithstanding the chapel 

103 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

was used for its proper purpose, it was at the same 
time made a receptacle for the Chancery records, 
which were crowded into every available space, even 
behind the altar and under the pews. 

Near the Rolls Office, on the west side of Chancery 
Lane, was once the Six Clerks' Office. According 
to Hatton, it was originally the Prior of Necton Park's 
Inn, and was called (from the Prior's name, I suppose) 
Herslet Inn. There was, in those early days, a 
brew-house here, but the place seems to have been 
put to its later legal use as early as 1377, so that it 
was contemporaneous with the Rolls. " These Six 
Clerks," says Hatton, " have their office up two Pair 
of stairs in this Building, which takes its name from 
them." Our authority also gives a summary of the 
duties of these Clerks : " Their business," says he, 
"is to read in Court before the Lord Keeper in Term 
time, to sign Bills, Answers, etc., to enroll Commis- 
sioners, Patents, Pardons, etc., and for Causes in this 
Court depending they are Attorneys for the Plaintiffs 
or Defendants ; their places, which are valued at 
5 or £6000, are in the gift of the Master of the Rolls." 

In Luttrell's Diary I find this reference to the 
place, under date of March 31, 1692, " Dr. Barebone 
hath undertaken to pull down the 6 clerks' office in 
Chancery Lane, and build a new one on arches in 
the new square adjoyning to Lincoln's Inn." There 
does not appear to be much recorded of this office. 
I think it fairly clear, however, that it was situated 
v/here Stone Buildings, built by Sir Robert Taylor 
in 1775-77, are now. It was certainly near Lincoln's 
Inn Gateway, as appears by a Plan dated 1592. Sir 
George Buc gives the following details, some of which 
are identical with what I have just set down : — 

" The six clerks of the Chancery are a society 
104 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

of gentlemen learned in the laws, and were at first 
priests, and thereupon called clerks (for so, anciently, 
all Churchmen were called). These clerks lodge and 
com.mon together in one house in Chancery Lane, pur- 
chased and accommodated for them by Master John 
Kederminster, Esq., one of the society. . . . This house 
was in ancient times the inn of the Abbot of Nocton, 
in Lincolnshire, and was since the house of one 
Herfleet,! and of him it was called Herfieet's inn. But 
now it is (or ought to be) called the Six Clerks' Inn." 

This office is now, of course, abolished, and what 
functions of it survive are incorporated in the Supreme 
Court of Judicature. 

The headquarters of the Incorporated Law Society 
form another feature of Chancery Lane. They are on 
the west side and were erected in 1832, from the designs 
of Vulliamy, at a cost of some £50,000. Since then 
they were enlarged on the north side in 1849, and again, 
by a very excellent addition, a few years ago ; and 
on the south side in 1857, when P. C. Hardwick was 
the architect. There is a fine and large legal library 
here, and the Law Club is at the back of the building. 

There are several interesting streets and courts 
out of Chancery Lane, and although taking us rather 
beyond our limits, a fleeting glance at them will not 
occupy very long. Neville's Court and Chichester 
Rents, so graphically described in Bleak House, have 
been already referred to, but Carey Street on the 
west of Chancery Lane, and Cursitor Street on its 
east, require a few words. The former, which takes 
its name from Nicholas Carey who lived in the reign 
of Charles i., connects Chancery Lane with Portugal 
Street. Its whole south side has long been occupied 

^ Hatton calls it, as we have seen, ' Herslet ' ; and Nocton he 
spells Necton. 

105 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

by the Law Courts, and much rebuilding in other parts 
has caused it to lose its once picturesque appearance, 
although the entrance into New Square, which still 
exists, helps to carry our minds back to earlier times. 

Hatton, in 1708, calls it " a spacious and consider- 
able street," and the magnificent carved doorway and 
overmantel from one of its houses (No. 18) ^ show that 
these were once of no mean order. It has, too, had 
several notable residents : Lady Fanshawe tells how 
she took a house here, belonging to Sir George Carey, 
in 1656 ; Sir William Blackstone also resided here, and 
here wrote his famous Commentaries ; Dr. Parr was an 
occasional visitor to his friend Oddie, the solicitor ; 
and Lord Eldon, as a young man ; Judge Park as a poor 
barrister, until his house was burnt down ; Sir Henry 
Taylor, the author of Philip van Artevelde ; and Mrs. 
Chapone (who corresponded with Miss Pinkerton — 
that majestic lady) — all once resided in Carey Street. 

Several small courts led out of the thoroughfare : 
Cook's Court, not to be confounded with the court of 
the same name in Cursitor Street, so called from Sir 
Henry Cooke, of Charles i.'s day, where Joseph Hill, the 
friend of Cowper, lived ; Grange Court, in which stood 
the Grange Tavern, mentioned by Davenant in one of 
his plays, and demolished in 1853, when King's College 
Hospital was about to be erected ; Plough Court, 
taking its name from the Plough Inn, on the south side 
of the street, which tavern was a place of considerable 
antiquity, and was once kept by Gully, the prize- 
fighter, who became Member of Parliament for 
Pontefract ; and Yeates Court, once connecting the 
west end of Carey Street with Clement's Inn. 

Carey Street is said once to have been known as 
Jackanapes Lane, and under this designation it is 

1 Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. 
106 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

referred to in the following extract from Luttrell's 
Diary, 1680 : — 

"April 15. — About 9 at night, John Arnold, Esq., 
one of his majesties justices of the peace for the county 
of Monmouth, goeing home to his lodging was sett upon 
in Bell Yard, near Jack-an-apes lane end by three 
fellows, who dangerously wounded him, endeavouring 
to cutt his throat ; " and again, on Aug. 26 of the 
same year, we read that " John Giles stood on the 
pillory in Lincoln's Inn fields, near Jack-an-apes lane, 
and was pelted by the people very severely." The 
origin of this denomination has not been recorded. 

If, architecturally, the thoroughfare has lost its 
once beautiful houses and its taverns, as well as the 
Nonconformist New Court Chapel which was pulled 
down to make way for the Law Courts, it has been 
endowed with some massive buildings, notably King's 
College Hospital, the Bankruptcy Buildings, and the 
late Mr. Waterhouse's large red-brick block of chambers 
known as New Court. 

This detour has taken us perilously near Lincoln's 
Inn Fields, which is outside my boundary, so we 
will return to Chancery Lane, crossing which we 
shall find Cursitor Street. 

There is little to see when we do so ; but the place 
has this interest that it took its name from the Cursitors' 
Office or Inn, in Chancery Lane itself, founded by Sir 
Nicholas Bacon who, according to Stow, built it " with 
divers fair lodgings for gentlemen, all of brick and 
timber." The Curisitors, from Coursetours, " Clerici 
de cursu," ^ were fourteen in number, and their duties 
were the preparing and issuing of writs on behalf of the 
Court of Chancery. 

The most notable inhabitant in Cursitor Street, 

' Coke's Institutes. 

107 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

was the future Lord Eldon, who, with his young wife, 
with whom, it will be remembered, he had eloped, 
set up housekeeping here in so humble a way that he 
once in after days told a friend, Mr. Pensam, that 
" many a time have I run down to Fleet Market to 
get sixpenny worth of sprats for supper." ^ 

In Swift's " Instructions to a porter how to find 
Mr. Curll's authors " is the following : "At the 
laundress's at the Hole in the Wall in Cursitor's 
Alley, up three pair of stairs, the author of my Church 
History. . . . You may also speak to the gentleman 
who lies by him in the flock bed, my Index Maker." ^ 

Out of Cursitor Street was that Took's Court, for 
ever famous as the Cook's Court of Bleak House, where 
Mr. Snagsby had his residence and his Law Stationer's 
business. Dickens describes the little drawing-room 
upstairs as having " a view of Cook's Court at one 
end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor Street) and 
of Coavins's, the Sheriff's Officer's backyard on the 
other." Here the oily Chadband held forth over the 
miserable Jo ; hither came the mysterious Mr. Tulking- 
horn ; and here ' Guster ' had her perennial fits. 

Bream's Buildings are so ugly and so modern that 
we are apt to forget that they occupy part of the site 
of old Symond's Inn, not an Inn of Court or Chancery, 
but private tenements let to law students, and so 
called, it is conjectured, from a Mr. Thomas Simonds, 
who was buried in St. Dunstan's in 1621. The offices 
of the Masters in Chancery were formerly here ; but 
in 1873-74 the old buildings were demolished, and 
what is termed, perhaps ironically, in London Past 
and Present, " a stately pile of 110 chambers " built 
on their site. 

* Twiss's Life of Eldon. 
^ Quoted in London Past and Present. 
108 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

The interest of Symond's Inn again centres in 
the fact that Dickens has immortahsed it. "A Httle, 
pale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn like a large dustbin 
of two compartments and a sifter," he calls it, in 
Bleak House, where we remember to have found 
that offensive person, Mr. Vholes, and later, his 
victim, Richard, who died here, with all his lost 
illusions about him. It was to a sponging-house 
in Took's Court, which at that time was full of 
them, that Sheridan was taken, and locked up in 
1815. 

Of Bowling Pin Alley, a small and insignificant court 
out of Chancery Lane, I find nothing of interest, 
except its unusual name and the fact that it was the 
birthplace of the notorious Mary Ann Clarke, whose 
connection with the Duke of York (son of George iii.) 
gave rise to a famous cause celbbre. Waters (W. 
Russell), in his Traditions of London, weaves a story 
round a Mrs. Carstairs who lived at No. 1. Waters calls 
it Bowling Inn Alley. Of New Street (divided into 
Great, Middle, and Little), and not to be confounded 
with the earlier name of Chancery Lane, there appears 
to exist no particular record, although by an entry 
in Luttrell's Diary, under date of April 13, 1682, we 
read that " about 9 in the morning, broke out a 
fire at the upper end of New Street, near Fetter Lane, 
which consumed that house and the tops of one or 
two more, but by the help of the engines it was 
quickly quenched." 

I cannot leave Chancery Lane without reminding 
the reader that it was here that Coleridge, " in wander- 
ing mazes lost," once saw a notice asking for "smart 
lads for the Light Dragoons," and incontinently 
went and took the King's shilling — one of the romantic 
episodes in that remarkable career. 

109 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Returning to Fleet Street, we find Apollo Court, 
about which I have something to say in the chapter 
on Taverns, Fig-Tree Court mentioned by Strype 
(not to be confounded with the court of the same 
name in the Temple), which took its name from the 
sign of the Fig Tree, and Bell Yard where was 
once the Bell Tavern, ^ an ancient hostelry belonging to 
the Priors of St. John in early times, and mentioned 
in the Parish Register for 1572. Here Fortescue, 
the friend of Pope, who, by the bye, termed the yard 
" that filthy old place," once lived in a house at the 
upper end ; and here, too, " the man from Shrop- 
shire " in Bleak House, lodged, as well as Neckett, 
the servitor of Coavinses. 

We now come to the last outlet from Fleet Street 
which I shall have to mention, namely. Shire Lane, 
variously known as Great Shire Lane, Shear Lane, 
as Strype spells it, Sheer Lane, and Rogue's Lane, and, 
at a later day, as Serle's Place. 

It was so called, according to Stow, " because it 
divideth the cittie from the shire," and it entered 
Fleet Street a few paces east of Temple Bar, being 
clearly shown in Faithorne and Newcourt's " Plan " 
of 1658. It connected Fleet Street with Lincoln's 
Inn Fields, which it joined towards the south-east 
corner. Its upper end was fairly wide, but as it de- 

1 Various seventeenth-century tokens exist, connected with Bell 
Yard : those of Mathew Fann, 1667 ; of Jacob Lions, at the 'Turk's 
Head,' 1666; of Stephen Porter, at the Nag Tavern, 1667; and of 
William Jonson, at the ' Drake,' 1667, are given by Akerman, who 
also records one having the curious legend, ' The Perculis (sic) in 
Bell.' Burn adds one, of Victor Drew, having the sign of a key 
within a half -moon, and the date 1667. He states that the ' Bell,' 
after the Dissolution, was granted by Henry viii. to Anthony Stringer, 
from whom, in 1543, it passed to one John Hornby. 

Chapter xv. of Bleak House is headed " Bell Yard," and a touch- 
ing chapter it is. 
110 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

scended to Fleet Street, in a somewhat serpentining 
way, it gradually became narrower, until its opening 
into the main thoroughfare was extremely exiguous. 
About half-way down, on the west side, was Little 
Shire Lane leading into Boswell Court, out of which 
ran (towards the south) Ship Yard ; all this area being 
now covered by the Law Courts bounded on the 
north by Carey Street. 

After being known as Shire or Sheer Lane for 
generations, this street, owing to the notoriety of 
its denizens, became entitled Rogue's Lane, in the 
reign of James i. Such a sobriquet might well have 
been continued down to comparatively recent times, 
for even in the middle of the nineteenth century, 
it bore the worst of reputations, being full of houses 
of the lowest kind, and, as a writer in No. 143 of the 
Quarterly Review phrases it, " a vile, squalid place, 
noisy and noxious, nearly inaccessible to either light 
or air, swarming with a population of the most 
disreputable character." Diprose specifies, by number, 
some of the most notorious dwellings at the lower 
end (which was in later days the worst), and he tells us 
that from Nos. 1, 2, and 3 a communication is said to 
have existed with No. 242 Strand, " through which the 
thieves used to escape after ill-using their victims " ; 
that Nos. 9, 10, and 11 were known as " Cadgers' 
Hall," a rendezvous for pickpockets et hoc genus omne ; 
and that No. 19 was called ' The Retreat,' from which 
a means of escape existed down Crown Court into 
the Strand. I have something to say about the 
taverns in this street in another chapter — taverns 
which were, for the most part, but meeting-places 
for the desperadoes who infested the neighbourhood ; 
while to one of better repute, ' The Trumpet,' I have 
referred in the account of the famous Kit-Kat Club, 

111 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

which had its inception here, and for which the street 
is chiefly famous.^ 

The upper portion of Shire Lane was, as I have said, 
much wider, and seems to have been respectable even 
in the eighteenth century, for Seymour describes it 
as having " better buildings and well inhabited." 

In 1845 Shire Lane was renamed Serle's Place, 
from the neighbouring Serle's Street and Serle's Court, 
now New Square, built in 1682 by a Mr. Henry Serle, 
whose arms are over the Carey Street Gateway. At 
this time the street was divided into Upper and 
Lower Serle's Place, and the spot of demarcation was 
found to be the Trumpet Tavern, when its front was 
cleaned of various coatings of paint in 1865. Then 
was discovered on it the name ' Serle's Place,' 
Lower Serle's Place beginning with the adjoining 
house. Notwithstanding the change of title, that 
of Shire Lane lingered on, and was accepted by many 
as the proper designation, down even to the time 
when all this part was cleared away to make room 
for the Law Courts. 

Although Shire Lane was notorious on account 
of many of its later denizens, it must not be forgotten 
that it could once boast some famous inhabitants ; 
the size of its houses, their beautiful over-doorways, 
and other signs, indicating that it had once been the 
abode of fashion. Here Sir Charles Sedley lived, and 
here was born his son, the well-known dramatist and 
poet ; Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, was another 
resident, and Anthony a Wood records dining here 
with him in 1670 " neere the Globe in Sheer Lane." 
An earlier inhabitant was Sir Arthur Atie, knight, 

1 In 1823, Theodore Hook, on account of his Bermuda defalcations, 
was put in a sponging-house in Shire Lane. There were many such 
places in this neighbourhood. 
112 



STREETS NORTH OF FLEET STREET 

secretary to the Earl of Leicester, and a friend of the 
Earl of Essex, who was buried from a house here, 
in St. Dunstan's, on Dec. 2, 1604 ; and here, in 1627, 
was living Lady Warburton. At a later period, 
Hoole, the translator of Tasso, resided in Shire Lane, 
in 1767, and was here visited by Dr. Percy and other 
literary men of the day ; and later still James Perry, 
the proprietor of the Morning Chronicle, in which 
the Sketches by Boz first appeared, and the inaugurator 
of Parliamentary reporting, lived "in a house in the 
narrow part of Shire Lane, opposite to the lane (Little 
Shire Lane) which leads to the stairs from Boswell 
Court," according to John Taylor.^ The names of 
certain tradesmen once carrying on business here, 
in the seventeenth century, are found on extant 
tokens — viz., John Parrett, at the 'Sword and Buckler'; 
William Richardson, in 1666 and 1667 ; Thomas 
Skelton, at the ' Three Arrows ' ; and Thomas Smith, 
at the ' Anchor,' 1667. 

With Shire Lane we complete the perambulation of 
the streets and courts leading from the north side of 
Fleet Street ; for we are now at Temple Bar, which 
forms the line of division between it and the Strand. 

1 Records of my Life, vol. i. p. 241. 



113 



CHAPTER IV 

TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

Temple Bar — ^the Temple Bar, that is, which many 
of us remember in situ — is now in honourable and rural 
retirement at the entrance to Theobald's Park, whence 
we may hope that one day it will perhaps again be 
permitted to emerge, and to be once more erected 
somewhere in the City of which it is an integral part. 
When we speak of Temple Bar it is this structure 
that we mean, — this object actually known, as I 
say, to many of us ; known to more by a thousand 
representations, — this not, perhaps, very worthy 
outcome of Wren's genius, which has, however, 
taken on itself something of the beauty and grace it 
does not intrinsically possess, by being for so long 
a familiar object of historic interest. But this Temple 
Bar is, after all, a relatively modern structure ; for it 
dates only from 1672, whereas its predecessor is known 
to have been in existence in 1533 ; and a bar, if not 
a building, stood at the spot where the so-called Griffin 
now divides the traffic, from time immemorial — 
probably, to be precise, from the twelfth century. 

It seems fairly certain that the first form of de- 
marcation between the City and Westminster took 
the form of a bar, or, possibly, simply a chain hung 
between two posts, and was, of course, called 
the ' Temple Bar ' because it adjoined the property 
114 



Sis 



'-^SJESS 














:ts?^ t 




TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

held by the Templars. It was about the middle of the 
twelfth century that the members of this powerful 
fraternity migrated hither from Holborn where their 
estate was situated, roughly between Chancery Lane 
and the Fleet River ; and when they did so, the Bar, 
which was probably here before that date, was given 
the name it and its successors were to hold for over 
seven centuries. 

Whatever was the date of the first erection of a bar 
here, however, we have no specific mention of one 
till the year 1301, when it is referred to in the grant of 
lands made to Walter le Barbour, stated to have been 
situated "extra Barram Novi Templi." ^ One or two 
subsequent references to the Bar are to be found 
in the City archives, the most important of these 
being that given by John Norden in his Sj^eculum 
Britannice, where he tells us that, in 1381, on the 
occasion of Wat Tyler's rebellion, " This gatte was 
thrown downe by the Kentish rebels." This might 
seem to prove that Temple Bar really consisted of a 
gate at this period ; but Norden's work was first 
printed in 1593, and we have no other mention of the 
barrier being anything but a bar or chain, before 
this period ; and this was, no doubt, all that it then 
consisted of. In the year 1502, however, custody 
of the barrier was given to Robert Fabian, the well- 
known chronicler and an alderman of Farringdon, 
John Brook and John Warner, also aldermen ; and 
the obvious conclusion is that there must, at least at 
this time, have been a building of some sort, for the care 
of it to be allotted to such important civic dignitaries. 
This is still more clearly proved by the fact that 
when Anne Bullen went to Westminster to be crowned. 
Stow tells us the Bar was " newly paynted and re- 
"^ Liber Albus. 

115 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

payred " ; and had the building been then first put 
up, the chronicler would almost certainly have men- 
tioned the circumstance. There was once at Cowdray 
Park, Midhurst, before the burning of that splendid 
structure, a series of pictures representing this Corona- 
tion procession, supposed to be the work ^ of Theodore 
Bernard! ; and one of them showed the pageant at 
Temple Bar. By the engravings which were happily 
made before these interesting relics perished, we see 
that then, at any rate, Temple Bar was a structure 
of considerable size, although, in Wyngaerde's " View 
of London," dated 1543, it is, curiously enough, not 
shown ; the only considerable erection at this point 
being the entrance to Middle Temple Lane. Agas 
(1560), on the other hand, indicates, in his " Plan," the 
roof (his map is practically a bird's-eye view) of a 
very large and solid structure, and I cannot therefore 
but think that Wyngaerde either omitted to put the 
gate in his plan (there is a line drawn across the road 
indicating, I imagine, the boundary), or that the 
large gateway - to the Middle Temple Lane is in- 
tended for it, and is placed at right angles to the 
street, by a pictorial licence, in order that it may be 
more clearly shown. 

When Sir Thomas Wyat's rebellion broke out, 
the gates of Temple Bar (close by which the leader 
of the insurrection was taken prisoner) were probably 
damaged ; at any rate, a little later, on the occasion 
of Queen Mary's passing along Fleet Street to her 
Coronation (Sept. 27, 1553), these gates were " newly 
painted and hanged " ; and in the following year, on 
the arrival of Philip of Spain, " a good and sub- 

* They were once erroneousl}' attributed to Holbein. 

* The gateway here was erected originally by Inigo Jones in 
i6ii, and I do not know that one existed before it. 

116 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

stantial new payre of gates " was ordered to be con- 
structed and placed here. 

Indeed, from this time, when Phihp, on his way, 
stayed at Temple Bar, " in viewinge a certain oracion 
in Latin, which was in a long table, wrytten with 
Romayne letters above the porte thereof," this land- 
mark has been connected with innumerable great 
pageants, and, as the official entrance to the City, 
has taken part in nearly every great pageant connected 
with its annals. To recapitulate the details of these 
is not here necessary ; indeed, it would be trenching 
on the history of London generally as well as on that 
of pageantry in particular, and although such things 
must be incidentally referred to, I shall chiefly con- 
fine myself to the annals of Temple Bar as a building 
rather than as a permanent triumphal arch. 

Li the same year as saw the arrival of King Philip, 
a new keeper was placed in Temple Bar ; at least, I 
think so much may be assumed from the following 
entry in the City archives : — - 

" 23 Oct. (1554) Item yt was agreid that Mr. Cham- 
b'leyne shall comytt the custody e of the key of the 
new gates, now sett up at Temple Barre, to the cyties 
ten'nte, dwellinge nyer unto the saide gates, takinge 
nev the lesse especial order with hyme, for the shutinge 
and openynge of the same gats at convenyente houres." ^ 

During the long reign of Elizabeth, Temple Bar 
was frequently the scene of pageantry, but two occa- 
sions stand forth particularly : the first, when the 
"Fair Virgin throned in the West" went to her Corona- 
tion, what time it was, we are told, " dressed finely 
with the two ymages of Got Magot and Albione, and 
Corineus the Briton, two gyats, bigge in stature, 
furnished accordingly, which held in their handes eve 
1 Letter Book R., fol. 311. 

117 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

above ye gate, a table wherein was written, in Latin 
verses, the effect of the pageantes, which the citie 
before had erected, which verses were also written in 
English meter, in a lesse table," etc. ; ^ and the second, 
when the Queen went to St. Paul's (Nov. 24, 1588) 
to give thanks for the overthrow of the Armada, on 
which occasion Temple Bar was suitably bedizened, 
and the City minstrels, congregated on the top, burst 
into triumphant song, as she stayed for a while beneath 
the archway. 

But it was on the accession of James i. that un- 
precedented efforts were undertaken to make Temple 
Bar a worthy entrance to the City's boundaries. On 
this occasion a special pageant was set up adjoining 
the Bar, from which Noble assumes, with some plausi- 
bility, that the building itself v/as either considered 
too old and weather-worn to be used for the occasion, 
or that, at this time, the conversion of such an object 
into a triumphal arch was not deemed feasible. On 
the other hand, this was done, as we have seen, in 
Elizabeth's day and with success, and therefore this 
argument seems less forcible than the former one. 
When, too, we read of a pageant adjoining Temple 
Bar, we must assume it to have been erected either 
on the Fleet Street or Strand front, and not at the 
side, which the narrowness of the roadway would 
have made impracticable. It must have been a gor- 
geous affair ; for we are told, in the quaint language of 
the day, that it was like " an exchange shop, it shined 
so in the dark place, and was soe pleasing to the eie. " 

The reason why a separate pageant was deemed 
necessary here is indicated by the fact that a ' Temple 
of Janus ' was set up, teeming with the allegories 
beloved of the period, and serving as a setting to the 

1 Quoted bj' Noble. 
118 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

fine speeches, written by Ben Jonson and Middleton, 
delivered from it. This Temple was no less than 90 feet 
high and 50 feet wide, and was ornamented with 
battlements, turrets and posterns, and had one great 
gate in the middle. A full description of it may be 
read in Gilbert Dugdale's Time Triumphant,^ as well 
as in Nichols' Progresses, and its chief interest, here, 
is that it helped to give Temple Bar an apotheosis 
to which it never afterwards attained. Indeed, it 
was in the following reign that suggestions were made 
for the rebuilding of the Bar. We can see from old 
prints that, if solid, it was a distinctly plain and un- 
inspired structure, and we are hardly surprised to 
find, a few years after the artistic Charles had succeeded 
his father, and Inigo Jones was helping to beautify 
London, that the following order was issued : — 

" May 5, 1636. Item according to an order of the 
Lords of his Maties. most honble Privy Councell of 
the xxvii'*" Aprill last it is order'd that Mr. Recorder, 
Mr. Aldran. Ffen, Sir Morris Abbott, and Mr. Aldran. 
Garraway that were lately before the Board touching 
the repaire of a house at Temple Barr shall meete and 
conferre wth. Inigo Jones esq. Srveyor Genall. of his 
Matie. Works touching a convenient gate to bee 
built in that place." ^ 

In consequence of this, Inigo Jones prepared a 
design for a new archway. A representation of this 
drawing was included by Kent in the Book of Designs 
he published in 1727, the original having been in 
Lord Burlington's collection. A description of it is 

^ Published in 1604. 

2 In Remembrancia I find a slightly earlier reference to this project. 
Under date of April 27, 1636, is an " Order in Council, directing certain 
Aldermen, the Recorder, and Inigo Jones Esq., His Majesty's Surveyor 
General, to confer touching a convenient gate to be built at Temple 
Bar, and report to the Council thereon." 

119 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

preserved among the Harleian MSS./ and this, together 
with the drawing itself, is sufficient to prove what a 
splendid monument was lost to London when, from 
some cause or another, probably the outbreak of 
the Civil War, the scheme was never carried into 
execution. In fact, Old Temple Bar was yet to witness 
one or more historic scenes before it was finally swept 
away : Cromwell passing through it as Lord Pro- 
tector ; Charles ii. on that eventful 29th of May ; 
the Merry Monarch, again, going to be crowned, on 
which occasion the Duchess of York viewed the pro- 
cession from a specially erected balcony over the gate- 
way ; and finally, the Great Fire, providentially stopped 
before it reached the Temple or its Bar. But before 
this last event, steps had been taken towards doing 
something Sir John Popham had pointed out the 
necessity of widening it ; the King had interested 
himself in the matter, and had even promised financial 
aid 2 (though that was not usual with the easy-going 
Charles — the difficulty being to get the money from 
the royal exchequer) ; but the Plague and the Fire 
put such matters out of men's heads for a time. How- 
ever, in 1668, the question cropped up again, in the 
following form : — 

" 11th June 1668. This Court understanding 
from Sir Richd Browne, that the Lords and others, 
his Maties Commrs. for the streets, &c., have pleased 
to offer themselves to come down and consider with this 
Court of the business about Temple Barre, doth order 
that the Cittyes Remembr. doe acquaint their Lorpps. 
&c., of the readiness of this Court to attend their 
comeing at ye Guildhall on Tuesday or Thursday 
morning, as they shall please to appoint." 

After a year had been spent in discussing the matter, 
1 G839, fol. 146. ^ See Domestic Entry Book, 17, p. 102. 

120 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

we find that it was at last " speedily determined to 
build the new gate " ; and the following document 
shows that at last the man who would not allow the 
grass to grow beneath his feet was to be consulted : — 

" 27 June 1G69. The proposalls now pnted. 
in writing from the Lords and others, the Comrs. 
Highwayes and Sewers, &c., touching the opening 
and enlarging the passage at Temple Barre, are by 
this Court referred to the Comitte. for rebuilding 
the Citty, to the end that they may thereof speedily 
consider, and conferre with Dr. Wren and such as are 
or shall be appointed by the said Commrs. and there- 
upon agree what is reasonable and convenient to bee 
done or desired on the Cittyes behalfe, and certify 
unto this Court in writing under their handes their 
doings and opinions therein." 

A further entry in the City's records brings the 
new scheme a step nearer completion, and is further 
interesting, as showing whence the financial help 
promised by the Crown was to come. It is dated 
July 29, 1669, and runs as follows : — 

" The Commissioners of Streets and Sewers, sitting 
at Scotland Yard, have several times proposed the 
opening and taking down of Temple Barr, for enlarging 
the streets there, and to pay the sum of £1005 out of 
the revenue arising by Hackney Coaches, to satisfy 
the City, and such as claim under them for their 
respective estates in the houses, and rebuilding over 
and adjoining to the said building, and towards the 
charge of taking down and rebuilding the same ; 
to which this Court hath hitherto declined to agree 
to, in regard, it appears, upon a due estimate and 
computation, that the charge of that work will far 
surmount the said sum. Now this day the Lord 
Mayor made relation unto the Court that his Lord- 

121 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

ship was sent for to appear before his Majesty in 
Council on Friday last, upon his Majesty's demand 
did offer his charge before mentioned as the reason 
why the said Temple Barr was not taken down withal, 
respecting the great sum of money the City had ex- 
pended towards the rebuilding their public works 
consumed in the dismal fire, amounting already to 
about £60,000, for all which they are thereby clearly 
indebted and how great a sum is yet further necessary 
to the works remaining, with other instances of this 
Citty's present weak estate and inability. But that 
His Majesty did nevertheless insist upon taking down 
of the said Barr and Buildings, and signifying his 
pleasure several times to that purpose, and that 
towards the said charge the City should accept the 
said £1005, but was pleased afterwards to declare that 
when that sum was expended he would take care they 
should be further supplied, either out of the said 
revenue by Hackney Coaches or otherwise, for re- 
viving or finishing that work. 

" It was ordered — That Mr. Chamberlain should 
receive the sum of £1005 towards the rebuilding of the 
said Barr." 

During the next year the process of demolishing 
the existing building was carried out, and it is interest- 
ing to learn that one William Middleton was employed 
in superintending the work, the following entry appear- 
ing in the " Accounts for the repairing of high waies and 
sewers " : ^ — 

" Pd. Mr. Wm. Middleton, for Councell for drawe- 
ing the writings for the Removeing of 
Temple Barr, Sec. .... lOo/." 

The Temple Bar erected from Wren's designs 

1 Quoted by Diprose. 
122 



{ 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

was in many respects an excellent and effective piece 
of work. Criticism has, however, dealt hardly with it, 
and it has been described as heavy and uninspired, 
lacking alike in dignity and grace. But it must be 
remembered that the decorations which once relieved it 
had, in the process of time, become worn away, or 
had suffered from the hands of the vandals, and left 
the main structure unadorned and disfigured, which 
largely accounted for that lack of distinction so often 
urged against it. 

Unfortunately, very little is known with regard to 
the details of Wren's work. Noble, however, discovered 
in a folio volume entitled Expenses of Public Buildings 
after the Great Fire, preserved in the Guildhall, the 
following list of payments concerning it : — 

" 1669. Aug. 14. Paid Katherine Wright, 
Widdow, by order of Sir Wm. Turner, 
Knt, Lord IMayor, dated this day, for 
her interest in her house at Temple Barr £i2,S o o 

Sept. 25. Pd. Henry Spillman, esq, Tres^' 
to the Comm''^ of Sewers sitting in 
Scotland Yard, on account of ffees for 
^^1500 received there for rebuilding 
Temple Barr, by order of Court of 
Aldermen, dated 23 Sept. . . . £10 o o 

167 1. Aug. 22. Pd. Anthony Tanner, 
Bricklayer, by order dated the 17th 
August . . . . . ^12 10 o 

1672-3. March 10. Pd. Thomas Hodgskins 
Smith, out of the cole money, in full for 
his worke at Temple Barr, between 6th 
Sept. 1672, and 30th of ye same 
month ..... /60 o o 
(part of ;^386 for work here and else- 
where)." 

These payments refer, as will be seen, to compensa- 
tion for disturbance, and for bricklayer's work, in 

123 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

demolition and re-erection. The more decorative 
part of the new structure comes under the payments 
made to the masons and sculptor employed for the 
stone casing and for the carvings with which it was 
covered. Of these artists, Joshua Marshall and Thomas 
Knight were the masons, and they received, between 
May and November 1670, £700 for their labours. The 
sculptor was John Bushnell, who executed the four 
figures in stone which decorated the building. He 
received, in all, for these, the sum of £480 ; £390 of 
which was paid, in six instalments, during the years 
1670 and 1671, but the remaining £90 not till 1680. 

Joshua Marshall was IMaster Mason to the Crown, 
and it was he who carved the base of Le Soeur's statue 
of Charles i. at Charing Cross. John Bushnell produced 
a considerable number of statues and memorials at 
this period ; but he was a strange person, and gave 
himself up to inventions which proved, in the main, 
abortive. The statues he carved for Temple Bar are 
generally regarded as his most successful work.^ 

What the chief author of the new building received 
for his designs and superintendence, does not appear 
to be recorded, for not even among the Wren MSS. in 
the British Museum is there any mention of payments 
received by the architect in this respect. When com- 
pleted. Temple Bar bore, on its east side, the following 
inscription : — 

" Erected in the year 1670, Sir Samuel Starling, 
Mayor ; continued in the year 1671, Sir Richard 
Ford, Lord Mayor ; and finished in the year 1672, 
Sir George Waterman, Lord Maj^or." 

This inscription became, in process of time, illegible. 
In its pristine condition Temple Bar may be thus 
described. Its basement was rusticated. In the 

^ Sec account of him in the author's Lives of Bvitish Sculptors. 
124 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

centre was a large flattened arch, spanning the carriage- 
way, and on each side a smaller semicircular arch 
over the footway. On each of the fa9ades were four 
Corinthian pillars, an entablature, and an arched pedi- 
ment. On the west side, in two niches, were statues 
of Charles i. and Charles ii., habited as Romans ; and 
on the east side, corresponding to them, were James i. 
and Anne of Denmark (who, by the bye, was often 
mistaken for Queen Elizabeth). Over the keystone 
on the east side were the City arms. The whole 
was constructed of Portland stone. A feature in the 
sculptured work was the profusion of fruit and foliage 
carved in the pediment ; but this, together with the 
supporters of the royal arms and other ornaments, 
had disappeared long before the Bar was finally 
removed. 

Before coming to this last stage in its career, one 
or two points in Temple Bar's later history must be 
alluded to. If, as an architectural feature, it failed 
to satisfy the critical, as a memorial of the City's 
power it had a significance which even now that 
it has gone, attaches to the spot it occupied. For 
it is at this point that the sovereigns on their visits 
to the City are obliged to halt, and cannot, according 
to civic etiquette, enter the area ruled over by the 
Corporation of London without first knocking and 
asking permission to pass through. The presentation 
to the monarch, by the Lord Mayor, of the City sword, 
and the returning it by the sovereign, form part of 
the picturesque ceremony which takes place on such 
occasions. 

I do not think there has ever been an attempt 
to exclude the ruler ; but at least once the gates 
were closed against the citizens themselves, the 
occasion being the notorious " Wilkes and Liberty 

125 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Riots," in 1769, when what was described as " The 
Battle of Temple Bar " took place. It appears that 
some 600 merchants, bankers, and others, set out 
from the City, to present an address, opposing 
Wilkes, to the King at St. James's. When, however, 
the cavalcade reached Temple Bar, the mob, 
which had assumed a threatening attitude along 
the route, closed the gates by force, and thus 
prevented the deputation from proceeding. How- 
ever, by driving up Chancery Lane and other 
indirect routes, some of the more determined op- 
ponents of Wilkes, to the number of 150, managed 
to reach the palace, and duly presented their address, 
though not without difficulty and danger ; for, at 
St. James's, it was found necessary to read the 
Riot Act and to call out the troops. An engraving 
of the " Battle " was published in the London 
Magazine for April 1769, with a companion plate 
entitled " Sequel to the Battle of Temple Bar," 
showing the vicinity of St. James's and the arrival 
there of the deputation.^ 

Just as, in earlier days, the entrances to London 
Bridge were decorated with the heads of malefactors, 
so, at a later period, was Temple Bar made hideous 
by the skulls and limbs of those who had been be- 
headed and quartered for high treason. It would 
seem that the first of these revolting displays took 
place after the detection of the Rye House Plot, when 
the limbs of Sir Thomas Armstrong were thus ex- 
hibited on the iron spikes specially fixed for this 
purpose above the pediment of the centre arch. At a 
later period the head and quarters of Sir William 
Perkins, and the quarters only of Sir John Friend, 
implicated in the plot to assassinate William iii., 

1 Noble. 
126 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

were set up here. Evelyn, under date of April 10, 1696, 
records seeing what he calls " a dismal sight, which 
many pitied." " I think," he adds, " there never was 
such a Temple Bar till now, except once in the time of 
King Charles ii., viz. of Sir Thomas Armstrong." 

The next head placed on Temple Bar was that 
of Colonel Henry Oxburg, who suffered death as an 
adherent of the Old Pretender. 

" On the evening of this execution," writes Dr. 
Doran, " a man was seen, with a small bundle under 
his arm, ascending a ladder, to the top of Temple Bar. 
Arrived there he took the white cloth from off that 
which he had carried in it, and then the men and 
boys gathered below, saw that it was a human head. 
The man thrust it on to an upright iron rod, then 
descended to the cart which awaited him, and drove 
away towards Newgate. Next day, idlers were 
peering at the head through a glass, and pious 
' Romans ' secretly crossed themselves and prayed 
that Heaven would give rest to the soul of the colonel. 
' And may God damn those who put his head up 
yonder ! ' cried a too zealous Jacobite, who got a 
month in the Compter for his outspokenness." ^ 

Another who forfeited his life on behalf of the same 
" lost cause," was Christopher Layer. His head, set 
up in 1723, was allowed to remain on Temple Bar for 
a longer period than any other ; indeed, it is said 
to have been thus exhibited for no less than thirty 
years, being at length blown down in a gale. So 
long had it remained that, as a writer once put it, " it 
seemed part of the arch itself." ^ This must have 
been the head which Rogers, the poet, remembered 
seeing, " a black, shapeless lump " 

^ London in Jacobite Times, vol. i. pp. 216-17. 

2 Temple Bar, the City Golgotha. By a Barrister. 1853. 

127 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Timbs tells a story connected with this gruesome 
relic, thus : " One stormy night it was blown from 
off the Bar into the Strand, and there picked up by 
Mr. John Pearce, an attorney, who showed it to 
some persons at a public-house, under the floor of 
which it was stated to have been buried. Dr. Rawlin- 
son, the antiquary, meanwhile, having made enquiries 
after the head, with a wish to purchase it, was imposed 
upon with another instead of Layer's head ; the former 
the Doctor preserved as a valuable relic, and directed 
it t'^ be buried in his right hand ; which request is 
stated to have been complied with." ^ 

The last victims whose remains were subjected to 
the degrading exhibition on Temple Bar, were those 
who suffered death for their complicity in the '45. 
Of these, Towneley and Fletcher were set up in 1746. 
A scarce print of the period shows the position they 
occupied, and gives, it is said, a very accurate re- 
presentation of their features. Walpole, writing to 
George Montague on Aug. 16 of this year, remarks : 
" I have been this morning at the Tower, and passed 
under the new heads at Temple Bar, where people 
make a trade of letting spying glasses at a halfpenny 
a look." About the same time a more notable person 
than Walpole also passed beneath the gruesome 
relics — I mean Dr. Johnson. " I remember," he says, 
" once being with Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. 
While he surveyed Poets' Corner, I said to him — 

' Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.' 

When we got to the Temple Bar, he stopped me, 
pointed to the heads upon it and slily whispered me — 
'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis.'" 
According to the report of a news-writer, on April 1, 

^ Romance of London. See also Doran's London in Jacobite Times. 
128 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

1772, one of the two remaining heads on Temple 
Bar fell down on the previous day, so that Johnson 
and Goldsmith must have seen them before then, al- 
though Johnson only related the story, at one of the 
Literary Club dinners, in April 1773. 

Several people who lived well into the nineteenth 
century remember seeing the last head on Temple 
Bar. 

Although Temple Bar survived till the year 1878, 
it had been often threatened with demolition. The 
first to condemn it openly — not so much as an ar'?Jii- 
tectural feature, but as hopelessly obstructing traffic 
at the narrowest part of London's most important 
street — was John Gwynn, the architect, who published 
his London and Westminster Improved, in which he 
voices his complaint, in 1766. 

Nothing was, however, done at the time, and it 
was not till twenty-three years later that the fate 
of the structure seemed practically sealed. This was 
in connection with the drastic improvements instituted 
in the neighbourhood by Alderman Pickett, in 1787. 
Pickett lost his motion for the removal of the Bar 
by a single vote, but his representations as to its 
danger to traffic, caused the Court of Common Council 
to place a ' Warden ' at this point, for the purpose 
of preventing obstructions. Some months later (in 
the February of 1788) Pickett returned to the charge, 
and asked that a " select committee " should be 
appointed " to make enquiries " ; but this also 
was negatived — a fate that overtook still another 
attempt at reform on the part of persevering 
Mr. Pickett. The latter occasion gave rise to the 
following set of rhymes, written by John Williams, 
better known under his nom de guerre of Anthony 
Pasquin : — 

I 129 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

THE METROPOLITAN PROPHECY 

(Writlen on the Report of removing Temple Bar in 178S) 

If the Gate is pulled down, 'twixt the Court and the City, 
You'll blend in one mass, prudent, worthless, and witty. 
If you league cit and lordling, as brother and brother, 
You'll bi'eak order's chain, and they'll war with each other. 
Like the Great Wall of China, it keeps out the Tartars 
From making irruptions, where industry barters. 
Like Samson's Wild Foxes, they'll fire your houses, 
And madden your spinsters, and cousin your spouses. 
They'll destroy in one sweep both the Mart and the Forum, 
Which your Fathers held dear, and their Fathers before 
them. 

Although Alderman Pickett still prosecuted his 
scheme for the removal of Temple Bar, which he 
suggested should be replaced by " a noble and orna- 
mental pilaster on each side, with chains agreeable 
to the ancient bars," his attempted improvement, so 
far as the Bar was concerned, was never destined to 
emerge from its initial stages, notwithstanding the 
fact that, in 1793, another Committee had reported 
on his plans and, two years later, an Act of Parliament 
was passed sanctioning the necessary purchase of the 
adjoining houses. What was done was, however, a 
great and permanent improvement, being the removal 
of the notorious Butcher's Row, and the erection on 
its site of the new houses known as Pickett Place. ^ 

The fact that Pickett's scheme for the removal 
of Temple Bar, as part of his projected improvements, 
never came to anything, did not prevent others from 
agitating towards the same end. One such attempt 
was made in 1868 ; one reason being that the Bar was 
supposed to be unsafe, which it was not ; and another, 

^ For a further account of this, see Annals of the Strand. 
130 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

that it formed a constant impediment to traffic, 
which it certainly did. Mr. Fricker, of Leadenhall 
Street, tried to bring about its demolition, but he 
found opposition to its removal too strong to be 
combated. At this juncture the project of building 
the New Law Courts at this point, began to be 
mooted, and it was suggested that it would be wise 
to await events before agitating further in the matter 
of Temple Bar. 

In 1874, the foundations of the Law Courts were 
begun, and four years later the removal of the stones 
of Temple Bar, about a thousand in number, took 
place as the result of the determination, at last come 
to, to clear away the time-honoured structure. These 
stones were duly numbered, but were allowed to 
remain exposed to the weather for no less than ten 
years. At the end of this period they were purchased 
by Sir Henry Meux, who had the Bar re-erected at 
the entrance to the grounds of Theobald's Park, the 
work being completed in December 1888. 

Two years after Temple Bar had been taken down, 
the ' Temple Bar Memorial,' vulgarly known as the 
' Griffin,' was erected on its site, and was unveiled by 
Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, on Sept. 8, 1880. 
This memorial was the work of various artists, C. B. 
Birch being responsible for the monster which sur- 
mounts it, Sir E. Boehm for the statues of Queen 
Victoria and the Prince of Wales, and Sir Horace 
Jones for the architectural part of the monument. 
The total cost was £10,600 odd, which included the 
medallion portraits and the four reliefs. 

The thing was never popular, and much defacing 
of those portions that could easily be broken off took 
place. These were afterwards replaced in bronze, 
since when the memorial has had to endure merely the 

181 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

attacks of the pen. It is difficult to see what better 
monument could have been erected. Given that one 
was necessary, — which is, of course, a question, — it had, 
perforce, to take up as little space as possible, and 
the difficulty of producing anything adequate within 
exiguous limits should be remembered by those who 
criticise it. It was contended that it took up too much 
space as it was ; but, on the other hand, it helps to 
divide the stream of traffic, which at such a point as this, 
with Chancery Lane adding its contribution to the main 
stream, is a matter of moment and even of necessity. 

Before leaving the subject of Temple Bar, two 
items of interest must be noticed connected with it. 
The first is the interesting custom which prevailed 
from time immemorial when the sovereign had to pass 
through it. On such occasions, the gates were closed, 
a herald sounded a trumpet, another herald knocked 
for admittance, which after some parley was granted ; 
the gates were thrown open, the Lord Mayor presented 
the City sword to the monarch, who immediately 
returned it, and the procession passed through into 
the City's boundaries. The other point of interest is 
connected with the structure itself. Over the prin- 
cipal archway was a small room. This apartment was 
for a long period used as a strong-room by Messrs. 
Child & Co., the bankers, from whose premises ad- 
joining (on the site of the Devil Tavern) ^ an entrance 
had been formed direct into it. 

On the opposite side of the way, adjoining Temple 
Bar, stood for many years a small penthouse of 
lath and plaster, which was occupied by Crockford 
— famous, later, as the establisher of the notorious 
gaming-house in St. James's Street — as a fish-shop. 

^ See Chapter VII. There is a representation of the room in Old 
and New London, vol. i. p. 30. 

132 




THE OLD BULK SHOP, TEMPLE BAR. 



To face page 133. 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

The shop dated from James i.'s time, and during 
his hfe Croekford never permitted any alteration or 
improvements to the premises. At his death, how- 
ever, it was removed and a briek building erected 
on its site (in 1846), a site now occupied by the Law 
Courts.^ On its front were inscribed the words : " Short 
and Son, late Creed, Fishmonger, established in the 
reign of King Henry the viii." It was the last so- 
called ' bulkhead ' in London. There is a drawing of 
it in the Crowle Pennant, dated 1795, showing the old 
house with a single gable, although, when pulled down, 
it had two. When the house was rebuilt, it was 
occupied by Messrs. Reeves & Turner, booksellers, 
who removed hither from 114 Chancery Lane. 

It was near Temple Bar that the Pillory used to 
stand, where Titus Oates underwent the ordeal of 
public indignation ; and Defoe, a triumph seldom ac- 
corded to those who had to submit to this punish- 
ment. 

Of the innumerable representations of Temple Bar, 
the most interesting was that painted by Michael Angelo 
Rooker and dated 1772, which belongs to Messrs. Child 
& Co., in whose first-floor front room it used to hang. 

As I have referred to the use made of the room 
in Temple Bar by Messrs. Child & Co., and as their 
historic premises were for so long almost a part of 
the old structure, this will be an appropriate place to 
say something about their headquarters, the oldest 
banking-house in London. 

Before the Childs came here, the premises. No. 1 
Fleet Street, afterwards taken by them, were occupied 
by a public ordinary, bearing the sign of the ' Mary- 
gold,' as early as the reign of James i., and we find 
that in 1619, " Richard Crompton, keeping an ordinary 

^ There is a representation of it in Archer's Vestiges of Old London. 

133 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

at the Marygold in Fleet Street, was presented for 
disturbing the quiet of John Clarke, being next 
neighbours, late in the nights, from time to time, by 
ill disorder." ^ 

In 1676, Robert Blanchard, who was a goldsmith 
at Temple Bar from early in the seventeenth century, 
took a lease of the ' Marygold ' for sixty-one years 
from John and Elizabeth Land, and it would seem 
that Francis Child was then in partnership with him, 
for in the Little London Directory of 1677, Messrs. 
Blanchard & Child are set down among the 
" Goldsmiths who keep Running Cashes " at this 
address. 

It appears, however, that earlier than this, Edward 
Backwell or Bakewell, an alderman and a banker of 
eminence in the reign of Charles ii., carried on business 
" in the same shop which was afterwards occupied 
by Mr. Child." A rare print of Backwell is in 
existence, and is recorded by Granger, from whom I 
quote the above information. Backwell was ruined, 
it will be remembered, by the shutting up of the Ex- 
chequer in 1672, having lent enormous sums to the 
Crown. Many references to him and his wife are to 
be found in the pages of Pepys's Diary. 

In 1681, Blanchard died, and Child (who became 
Sir Francis) continued the lease till 1706, when the 
landlord, John Land, also died, leaving the premises 
to St. Dunstan's parish, from whom Child continued 
to rent them. Included in Land's property was a 
house bearing the sign of the ' Sugar Loaf and Green 
Lattice,' which was, apparently, inmiediately in the 
rear of the ' Marj^gold ' ; probably being entered, as 
was then frequently the case, by a passage through 
the latter. Evidently it was part and parcel of Child's 

^ Note in Burn's Tokens. 
134 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

Bank, for in 1707 Sir Francis records the cost of re- 
building the ' Sugar Loaf,' as being £350. 

Li 1687, the Devil Tavern adjoining was pur- 
chased by the Bank for £2800, and in the following 
year a row of houses known as Child's Place was erected 
on its site. In the meanwhile, on the death of Blanch- 
ard. Child had taken John Rogers, apparently his 
cousin, into partnership ; and later, certainly by 1689, 
Mr. Jackson became a member of the firm. 

Sir Francis Child, who is one of Fleet Street's 
worthies, had been elected an alderman in this year, 
a sheriff in 1690, and Lord Mayor in 1699 (he was 
£4000 out of pocket by this). He was connected in- 
timately with City life, and was a benefactor to Christ's 
Hospital, of which he was President in 1702. In 
Luttrell's Diary are a large number of references to 
his various activities : thus, in 1692, we find him, in 
conjunction with Sir Stephen Evans and Sir Joseph 
Heme, advancing £50,000 towards the charges of 
the government of Ireland ; five years later, he is 
recorded as resigning his position as ' Jeweller ' 
to the King (he was the first banker who gave up 
the goldsmith's business) and being succeeded by Sir 
Stephen Evance {sic). 

In 1704, we have the following entry, the details 
of Avhich are, however, lost : " Sir Francis Child is 
bound over by the Court of queen's bench for a year, 
one Mr. Chamberlain, his neighbour, having sworn 
the peace against him." In 1710, Child became 
Member of Parliament for Devizes, but three years 
later he died, being buried in a vault in Fulham Church- 
yard. His eldest son, Robert, who had been in partner- 
ship with him, and who was knighted in 1714, suc- 
ceeded him, as did others of his numerous family, 
in his business. Osterley Park, the splendid seat of 

135 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

the family, came to the Earls of Jersey through the 
marriage of the fifth Earl with Lady Sarah Fane, 
daughter of the tenth Earl of Westmorland, whose 
mother was the daughter and heiress of Robert Child. 

There is no need here to follow the history of the 
Child family, as it will be found set forth in Mr. Hilton 
Price's book on ' Ye Marygold.' Nor does it immedi- 
ately concern us here. 

But we must not omit to mention the names of the 
famous people who kept their accounts at the ' Mary- 
gold,' some of whom transferred their business to 
Child's after the failure of Backwell. Of these were 
Charles ii. and his queen, and Henrietta Maria (as 
Queen Dowager) ; the Duke of York (afterwards 
James ii.). Prince Rupert, Oliver and Henry Cromwell, 
the Dukes of Richmond and Monmouth (natural sons 
of Charles ii.). Lady Castlemaine and Nell Gwyn, 
William iii. and his queen, Lord Clarendon, Pepys, 
Tom Chiffinch, the Duchess of Orleans, Lady Fanshawe, 
the Earls of Bedford and Rutland, the Dukes of Devon- 
shire and Bolton, Lord Keeper North, Bishop Stilling- 
fieet, the executors of Sir Peter Lely, the Duke of 
Marlborough, Dryden, Horatio Walpole, Prince George 
of Denmark, and many more whose names bulk largely 
in the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies. 

The records of the bank contain autographs of 
many of these, and portraits of various partners 
are also preserved there. Among these is one, by 
Lawrence, of the Lady Jersey who inherited her 
grandfather's immense property, and who married 
Lord Jersey in 1804 in the drawing-room of 38 Berkeley 
Square (now Lord Rosebery's), from which house her 
mother had eloped with Lord Westmorland in 1782. 
Apropos of this latter circumstance, the story is told 
136 




nil n s i;a.\k. 



To face page 1 37. 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

that once dining with Mr. Child at the ' Marygold,' 
Lord Westmorland asked him what he would do if 
he were in love with a girl, and could not obtain her 
parents' consent to their union. " Why, run away 
with her, to be sure ! " was the reply — a reply on which 
Lord Westmorland soon after acted. 

Before leaving the subject of Child's Bank, I must 
refer to a circumstance which is stated to have occurred 
in connection with it. It is said that in 1689, there 
being a threatened run on the bank, Sarah, Duchess 
of Marlborough (then Lady Churchill), collected all 
the ready money she could from friends, drove down 
to the ' Marygold,' and placed it at Child's disposal. 
Hogarth is said to have made two sketches of the 
incident : one showing the coach stopping at Temple 
Bar ; the other depicting the redoubtable Sarah 
entering the premises, following porters bearing the 
gold.^ 

There appears to be no record of the incident 
among the bank's archives, and, parenthetically, 
it may be remembered that Hogarth was not born 
till 1697, and, if he ever did produce such sketches, 
must have based them on some tradition. 

On the other hand, Ireland, in his Illustrations to 
Hogarth (1799), published an engraving entitled 
"Scene at a Banking - House in 1745."- Ireland 
thus describes this picture : " The figure in the 
chair was intended for Sarah, the celebrated Duchess 
of Marlborough. This circumstance is corroborated 

^ An entry in the Duchess's accounts reads : ' 1689, Jan. 4. To 
Sir Francis Childe, ;^i40o " ; but this could have had nothing to do 
with the reported incident. It seems merely to indicate the usual 
paying in of money. 

2 According to Mr. Austin Dobson, this picture belonged to Ireland, 
was bought at his sale by George Baker in 1801, sold at Baker's sale 
in 1825, and again sold, in the Forman Sale, in 1899. 

137 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

by the ducal coronet on the back of the chair, which 
is supported by two boys. The figures represented 
in a sitting posture are the principals of the banking- 
house of Messrs. Child & Co., who seem amply prepared 
to discharge all the demands pressing upon them. . . . 
The wealth of the house is allegorically represented 
by the bags of gold which are piled over each other 
in the background of the picture." 

But again, in this case, the story falls to the ground 
on a question of dates, because the Duchess died in 
1744. Mr. Wheatley, in his Hogarth's London, gives 
considerable space to a discussion of this mystery, 
but he is unable to provide any satisfactory solution ; 
and it is, of course, probable that the scene depicted 
is merely allegorical, and that the remembered run 
on the bank in 1689, or the attempted action of the 
Bank of England in 1745 to injure the credit of 
Child's, which is said to have been a fact, incredible 
as it may seem, may have caused Ireland to allo- 
cate the picture to one of those events, regardless of 
chronology. 

One other interesting circumstance with regard 
to Child's Bank is the fact that it was the original 
of Tellson's, in the Tale of Two Cities. In 1878, the 
premises were rebuilt, so that their appearance has 
little now in common with Dickens's famous descrip- 
tion, which I may be forgiven for here repeating : — 

" Tellson's Bank, by Temple Bar, was an old- 
fashioned place even in the year 1780. It was very 
small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. 
Any one of the partners would have disinherited 
his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson's. Thus 
it had come to pass that Tellson's was the triumphant 
perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a 
door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its 
138 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

throat, you fell into Tellson's, clown two steps, and 
came to your senses in a miserable little shop,i with 
two little counters, where the oldest of men made 
your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while 
they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, 
which were always under a shower bath of mud from 
Fleet Street, and which were made the dingier by their 
own iron bars proper and the shadow of Temple Bar." ^ 

It will be convenient here to mention two other 
famous banking-houses in Fleet Street — namely, Messrs. 
Gosling's, at No. 19, and Messrs. Hoare's, at No. 39. 
The former was first established by Henry Pinckney, 
'goldsmith,' at the sign of the 'Three Squirrels,' 
over against St. Dunstan's Church, during the Common- 
wealth. Pinckney was an active man in the parish, fill- 
ing various public offices, and, according to Boyne, he 
issued a farthing token from his house in Fleet Street. 
His premises were destroyed in the Great Fire, their 
rebuilding being settled by the Commissioners in 1677. 
In this connection he is described as Major Pinckney, 
and his property is shown to have consisted of four 
houses with a frontage on the south to the churchyard 
of the Temple. 

In July 1671, an advertisement gives him as 
" William Pinckney, goldsmith, at the Golden Dragon, 
near the Inner Temple Gate," and Noble thinks that 
this house adjoined the ' Three Squirrels,' and became 
later No. 19. The original sign, made of solid silver, 
is still preserved by the bank ; it is painted, and 
bears the date 1723. As it has a lock upon it, it would 

1 This is correct. The front part of the bank was always called the 
' shop.' 

2 111 the Gardiner Collection is a very interesting sketch of the front 
of the earlier bank. It is reproduced by Mr. Hilton Price in his 
account of ' Ye Mary gold.' 

139 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

appear that it was taken into the bank for safety 
every night. Its existence had been lost sight of till 
1858. 

The name of Gosling first appears in the firm in the 
time of Charles ii., in an account of " Moneys received 
and paid for Secret Services of Charles ii. and James ii., 
1679-88," where the following entry occm^s : "To 
Richard Bokenham in full for several parcells of gold 
and silver lace bought of Wm. Gostling ^ and partners 
on May 2, 1674, by the Duchess of Cleaveland for the 
wedding cloaths of the Lady Sussex and Lichfield, 
£646, 8s. 6d." 

William Gosling was afterwards knighted, and 
became an alderman and sheriff. His descendant. Sir 
Francis Gosling, was also a well-known civic dignitary. 
He was originally a bookseller, succeeding " R. Gosling " 
at the ' Mitre and Crown ' opposite St. Dunstan's 
Church. He gave up this business in 1756, and died at 
Fulham in 1768. Gosling's Bank is now one of the few 
which have not been absorbed with others, and together 
with Coutts's, Child's, Drummond's, and Hoare's, re- 
mains practically as it was centuries back. 

Hoare's Bank to-day occupies the sites of what were, 
at an earlier time, Nos. 34 to 39 Fleet Street, and 
therefore covers the ground where the famous Mitre 
Tavern once stood. Li 1819, a member of this old 
family. Sir Richard Colt Hoare, known for his topo- 
graphical works, published a privately printed volume 
on the Pedigrees and Memoirs of the Hoares. The 
early history of the family (supposed by Sir Richard 
to descend from a William Hore, of Rishford, in Devon, 
in the reign of Richard ii.) need not concern us here. 

1 In the Litile London Directory of 1677 the name of Will Gostlin, 
Pancras Lane, appears among the list of merchants ; but I imagine 
he was not identical with the Gostling mentioned above. 
140 



te 



^\ 






'i^esW 




*> '"^ lln :PrW^ 









■^3 Y ""^ 







TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

But, in the Little Directory of 1677, we find James Hore 
keeping a ' running cash ' (as it was then called) at 
the ' Golden Bottle ' in Cheapside ; and among the 
Secret Service accounts is the following, dated 1686 : 
" To Charles Buncombe and James Hore esqrs., two 
of the late Com*^^ for executing the office of master 
worker of the Mint, in satisfac'ion of so much money 
by them expended and paid to several officers in passing 
warrants, and for fees paid to officers of the Exchequer 
on the receipt of 2000 li., being to each of them 1000 li. 
for their service in that Commn., £103, 14s. 6d." 
It appears that this James Hore, or Hoare, went into 
partnership with Richard Hoare, certainly before 1693, 
for in that year the books of the bank show that a debt 
of £2200 was due by Richard to his partner ; while 
the removal of the business from Cheapside to the 
' Golden Bottle,' in Fleet Street, is said to have taken 
place between the years 1687 and 1692. 

James Hoare 's name appears once or twice in con- 
temporary records ; for instance, in Luttrell's Diary 
we read that in September 1689 " a commsn is granted 
to Mr. Hoare, Mr. Godolphin, and Mr. Corbett, for 
coyneing of new tynn farthings " ; and another entry, 
in the same place, notes his death in 1696. Richard 
Hoare is more frequently mentioned. In 1697, we 
find him, in conjunction with Sir Francis Child and 
others, agreeing to advance £60,000 " to pay ready 
money for such wrought plate as shall be brought into 
the Mint to be coyned " ; in 1710 he, with others, is 
giving bills for £350,000 " for supplying our army in 
Flanders." Eight years earlier he had been knighted, 
" when her majestic dined in the citty." In 1703, he 
was chosen as Alderman for Bread Street Ward ; in 
1709, he became Sheriff ; in the following year, he 
was made a colonel of one of the six City Regiments, 

141 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Sir Francis Child being another ; and in 1713 he became 
Lord Mayor. One of the mourning rings distributed 
at Pepys's death was given to Sir Richard. He himself 
died in 1718, and, on Jan. 13, was buried in the chancel 
of St. Dunstan's. 

A later Sir Richard was sheriff in 1740, and in a 
diary he kept he notes that " after being regaled 
with sack and walnuts, I returned to my own house 
in Flete Street, in my private capacity, to my great 
consolation and comfort." He also served as Lord 
Mayor in 1745, and took strong measures to cope 
with the expected entry of Prince Charles Edward 
into the capital. He died in 1754, and was buried, 
on Oct. 21, in the former Sir Richard's vault in St. 
Dunstan's Church. 

The original banking-house is described as having 
been " a low-browed building, with a narrow entrance," 
over which hung a model of the golden leather bottle 
traditionally said to have been carried by the founder 
of the firm when he first came to try his fortunes in 
London, but far more likely, as Sir Richard Colt Hoare 
suggests, chosen by James Hoar of Cheapside, from 
the fact that his father, Ralph Hoar, was a citizen 
and Cooper of the City of London. 

Hosmer Shepherd made two drawings in water- 
colour of Hoare's Bank — one in 1838, and another 
after it had been rebuilt by Su' Robert Smirke in 
1848. 

Fleet Street has always been notable for its banks. 
Even as early as 1309 there is a mention of " Edmund 
Godewyne, ]Menetor, and John the ]\Ienetor of Flete 
Strete," and of the " Menetor's (or Minter's) house " 
there ; ^ and in 1411, a goldsmith of Flete Strete is re- 
corded as having been slain without Temple Bar, and 

^ Riley, Memorials of London. 
142 



TEMPLE BAR AND SOME BANKERS 

thrown into the river. But it was in Charles ii.'s time 
that this kind of business first became general, and 
bankers, in the modern acceptation of the term, came 
first into existence. A list of those " Goldsmiths that 
keep Running Cashes " in the Directory of 1677 
provides us with the names of such as carried on 
their affairs in Fleet Street. Messrs. Blanchard & 
Child I have already spoken of ; but besides these 
we find Thomas Fowles, " at the Black Lion ir 
Fleet street." Luttrell spells the name Fowle, and telh 
us that " His majestic hath conferred the honour of 
knyhthood on Thomas Fowle, esq., goldsmith and 
alderman of London " (Sept. 1686). He died on 
Nov. 9, 1692, "of an apoplexy," the diarist records, 
and was buried with great pomp in St. Dunstan's. 
Then there was James Heriot " at the Naked Boy," a 
relation of the famous George Heriot of Edinburgh ; 
Mr. Kenton, " at the King's Arms " ; Messrs. Maw- 
son & Co., " at the Golden Hind " ; Michael Schrimp- 
shaw, " at the Golden Lion," of whom Luttrell 
records, in April 1683, that " one Mr. Scrimshaw, 
a considerable goldsmith in Fleetstreet, is broke 
and gone off " ; and John Conine, " in Salisbury 
Court." 

Another and later banking firm in Fleet Street 
was that of Messrs. Praed, which had been founded 
by William Praed of Tyrringham, Bucks, and Trevethoe 
in Cornwall, a member of an old Cornish family which 
had been settled as bankers in that county from an 
early period. The Praed family became extinct in 
1717, and when one of its members, James Praed, died 
in that year, he left his property to William Mack- 
worth, who assumed his benefactor's name. William 
Praed (the founder of the London branch) married 
Elizabeth, a great-granddaughter of Edward Back- 

143 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

well, whose mother was the second daughter of the 
second Sir Francis Child, in 1778, so that three 
Fleet Street banking firms were thus allied. William 
Praed died in 1833, aged eighty-four. His bank was 
situated on the north side of Fleet Street (at No. 
189), in a house which had originally been occupied 
by Mrs. Salmon of ' Waxworks ' fame. It was re- 
built in 1802, from the designs of Sir John Soane. 

There are various modern banking-houses in Fleet 
Street, among them being a branch of the Bank of 
England, but interest (except, of course, for depositors 
in these) centres chiefly around those older institu- 
tions whose annals date back to the earlier days of 
Fleet Street's history. 



144 



CHAPTER V 

THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

Clifford's Inn 

The Inns of Court and Chancery, which are situated 
within our present Hmits, are properly hmited to two, 
namely, the Inner, and the Middle, Temple ; but the 
buildings, at any rate, of some others still exist, although 
the original functions of these Inns have been done away 
with : they are Clifford's Inn and the two Serjeants' 
Inns, one in Chancery Lane and one in Fleet Street. 
The former are Inns of Court ; the latter were Inns of 
Chancery — a distinction not always remembered. 

Before dealing with the Temple it will be con- 
venient to clear the ground by drawing attention to 
the three Inns which, to-day, remain merely as relics 
of their former importance. Of these I touch on 
Clifford's Inn first ; ^ and properly so, because it was 
the most ancient of the Inns of Chancery. It took 
its name from Robert de Clifford, fifth Baron Clifford, 
to whom Edward ii. had granted, in 1310, " a messuage 
and appurtenances next to the Church of St. Dunstan's- 
in-the-West in the suburb of London," by the service 
of one penny paid to the Exchequer at Michaelmas. 
This property had once belonged to Malculine de 

1 Clement's Inn and Lyon's Inn, which were little more than lodg- 
ings for law students, have been dealt with in Annals of the Strand. 

K 145 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Harley, Escheator to Edward i,, but was taken over 
by the King, in consequence of certain debts owed by 
de Harley to the Crown ; later it had been held by 
John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, but had again re- 
verted to the Crown. About thirty years after this, the 
widow of the sixth Baron Clifford let the property to 
students of law, at an annual rent of £10 ; and from that 
period onward the place was used as an Inn of Chancery, 
although still belonging to the Clifford family.^ 

According to Brayley,^ the Inn, during this early 
period and down to the reign of Henry v., had as a 
sign the ' Black Lion ' ; and at this period it was self- 
governing and in no way connected with the Tem.ple. 

Stow speaks of the Inn in his day as being let to 
the students of law, at four pounds a year ; at which 
time there appear to have been one hundred during 
term, and twenty out of term. In 1571 we find Sir 
Edward Coke, then fresh from the university, residing 
here, and in the following year, according to Fuller, 
he " entered as studient of Municipal Law in the Inner 
Temple," to which society Clifford's Inn had now 
become attached. Coke must have been subject to 
those quaint rules which obtained in his day in Clifford's 
Inn, and some of which Mr. Philip Norman has set 
down in his interesting account of the place. ^ For 
instance, should he have been guilty of ribaldry, he 
would have had to pay a farthing for each offensive 
word ; should he have struck a fellow-member " with- 
out effusion of blood," a fine of twelve pence was 
extorted and he " shall make amends " ; if blood 

^ In 1469 it was forfeited to the Crown by John, Lord Clifford, and 
the King granted it to John Kendale, but it appears to have, later, 
reverted to the Clifford family. 

2 Londiniana. 

2 London Vanished and Vanishing. 

146 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

were shed, then 6s 8d. was claimed. He could not 
play at dice or cards " or any ridiculous amusements 
in metalls " ; nor could he lend money on usury, 
or keep dogs, or break into the buttery, or go outside 
the gates after closing-time, or bring in and conceal 
any common woman within the sacred precincts of 
the Inn. In a word, he found in London very much 
the same sort of restraint as he had found at the 
University. These rules dated from the time of 
Edward iv., but were renewed in the reign of Henry vii. 
John Selden was also a member of Clifford's Inn, 
having come hither from Oxford in 1602 ; and here 
he remained till 1604, when he went to the Inner 
Temple, where he occupied rooms in an upper storey 
of Paper Buildings, looking towards the garden. 

Another interesting figure connected with the place 
was that of Harrison, the regicide, who was once 
clerk to an attorney here, and persuaded his fellow- 
clerk, John Bramston (cousin of Sir John Bramston), 
to take up arms.^ 

In the year 1618 the members of the Society of 
Clifford's Inn bought the property, in which they had 
been tenants for so long, from the fourth Earl of 
Cumberland and his son, Lord Clifford, for the sum 
of £600, subject to a rent charge of £4 a year, the 
reservation of a small piece of land adjoining Serjeants' 
Inn, and a set of chambers to be kept for the use of 
the Clifford family. The rent charge was eventually 
purchased by the Society in 1880. 

InNotesand Queries {2iid series) the following notice of 
a curious custom which obtained in this Inn, is given : — 

" A very peculiar dinner-custom is observed in 
the Hall, which is believed to be unique. The Society 
consists of two distinct bodies — ' The Principal and 
^ See Sir John Bramston's Autobiography. 

147 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Rules,' and the junior members, or ' Kentish Mess.' 
Each body has its own table : at the conclusion of 
dinner, the chairman of the Kentish Mess, first bowing 
to the principal of the Inn, takes from the hands of 
the servitor four small rolls, or loaves of bread, and, 
without saying a word, he dashes them several times 
on the table ; he then discharges them to the other 
end of the table, from whence the bread is removed 
by a servant in attendance. Solemn silence — broken 
only by three impressive thumps on the table — pre- 
vails during this strange ceremony, which takes the 
place of grace after meat in Clifford's Inn Hall, and 
concerning which not even the oldest member of the 
Society is able to give any explanation." 

The Hall referred to here, appears originally to 
have had a hearth in its centre, and it was here that 
Sir Matthew Hale and other judges sat to settle dis- 
putes arising about property after the Great Fire. The 
portraits of Hale and his coadjutors were ordered to be 
painted, as a memorial of the efficient manner in which 
they carried out their difficult and arduous task, and 
these are now to be seen in the Guildhall Art Gallery. 

In 1766 a new Hall was found to be necessary, 
and this was erected and completed in the following 

year (the date 1767 and the initials -^ ^ , Principal 

William Monk, can be seen outside), from the designs 
of Mr. Clarke, bricklayer to the Society, at a cost 
of £600 ; the porch and cupola, as existing, were after- 
thoughts. It would seem that some of the original 
brickwork was incorporated in this Gothic building, 
and it therefore has an interest which its architectural 
features would hardly justify. The chapel attached 
to the Inn was anciently called St. Katherine's. It 
was on the north side of St. Dunstan's Church, and 
148 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY ] 

in 1624 was ordered to be fitted with pews, and a 
doorkeeper kept to prevent the gentlemen of the Inn 
being annoyed at their devotions.^ 

The precincts of CHfford's Inn, entered by CHfford's 
Inn Passage in Fleet Street, over which may be seen 
the arms of the Cliffords, and having access from 
Fetter Lane, through an old iron gateway, and Chancery 
Lane, are most picturesque. No. 12 is said by Mr. 
Norman to be, in part at least, the most ancient, 
dating from 1624, and was originally known as 
Fetherstone's building. When this was repaired, the 

date 1719 and the initials r p , Principal James Foster, 

were set up, and may still be seen. Other old buildings 
here date from 1663 to 1690, and are all of a character 
to arrest attention, particularly as being relics of an 
earlier day remaining in the midst of a practically 
rebuilt part of the city. Some years ago the whole 
of this property was purchased, and it was feared 
would meet a fate similar to that which has overtaken 
so much of older London. Recently, however, this 
has been prevented by the generosity of the Society 
of Knights Bachelor, which has come forward and 
saved the threatened vandalism ; one of the chief 
movers in this splendid act, and the largest subscriber 
to the fund, being Sir Henry Pellatt, Colonel of the 
Canadian Royal Rifles, who visited this country on 
the occasion of the Coronation. 

In latter days the chambers in this quiet, un- 
noticed little corner have been occupied by some 
notable people. At No. 13 once lived George Dyer, 
the friend of Lamb, who fell into the New River on 
a famous occasion, which gave rise to Elia's delightful 
paper on his Amicus Redivivus. Here Dyer lived 

1 Noble, j 

149 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

from 1792 to remote old age, dying in 1841, aged 
eighty-five. Lamb likens him to " a dove in an asp's 
nest " here, but he loved the place, and, when a female 
companion was necessary, married his laundress — 
the lady who could neither read nor write, and whom 
her husband termed ' not literate.' One hopes that 
when Leigh Hunt breakfasted with Dyer here, and 
found " no butter, no knife . . . and the teapot 
without a spout," that it was in his host's unre- 
generate bachelor days ; although even under marital 
conditions, things must have been not quite as they 
should be, if one can gather anything from Crabb 
Robinson's description of the lady in later years 
(1860), when he called on her in Clifford's Inn, " an 
apartment at the top . . . small and seemingly full of 
inhabitants." " If cleanliness be next to godliness," 
adds the diarist, " it must be acknowledged that she 
is far off from being a good woman." 

Another resident here was Robert Paltock, the 
author of Peter Wilkins ; but a far more notable 
man is connected with the place, namely, Samuel 
Butler, who for many years lived in No. 15, one of 
the houses dating from 1663. Butler's Erewhon and 
Erezvhon Revisited are famous books, but he wrote, 
here, one that I venture not only to think finer, but 
also to class as one of the greatest novels (within its 
limits) of the century — The Way of All Flesh — ^which 
is surely not known in anything like the way it merits. 
It is a remarkable book, and, if only because of its 
being written in Clifford's Inn — Clifford's Inn de- 
serves to be preserved. 1 

^ T. Hosmer Shepherd produced a picture of Clifford's Inn Hall 
which was engraved by J. Hinchcliff in 1830, and recently Mr. Percival 
J. S. Perceval has brought but a book on Clifford's Inn, illustrated by 
a number of his own drawings of its interesting features. 
150 




s 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 



Serjeants' Inn, Chancery Lane 

This is not, and never has been, properly, an Inn 
of Court or Chancery, hke the similar institution 
in Fleet Street. It was, to use Stow's words, " so 
called, for that divers judges and Serjeants at the 
law keep a commons, and are lodged there in term 
time." It adjoins Clifford's Inn on the west, and 
once the property appertained to the See of Ely. In 
1393-94, it was, however, described as " Tenementum 
domini Johannis Skarle," and subsequently demised 
to the Clerks in Chancery. It was originally called 
Faryngdon Inn (" Hospicium nuper Faryndon's in 
Chancellor's Lane "), after that Farringdon who 
gave his name to the Ward ; but in 1508 it is called 
Serjeants' Inn. It seems to have been selected by 
the Serjeants as their headquarters, after their earlier 
Inn in Holborn (Scroop's Inn, it was called) had been 
sold, and their other home in Fleet Street, which, 
however, according to Dugdale, was a more recent 
one, had become dilapidated. 

In the year 1416 Serjeants' Inn was given over 
wholly to the Law (it is called Hospicium Justiciari- 
orum, in 1430), as before this date we are told that 
the Serjeants merely had lodgings there. Subsequently 
the freehold passed to the Ashleys in the person of 
Sir Anthony Ashley, knight, and from them the 
lawyers continued to rent. At a later date it appears 
to have reverted to the Bishops of Ely, as it was 
from that See that the place was eventually purchased 
by the Serjeants. 

The original hall was erected by Lord Keeper 
North, ^ whose residence in Chancery Lane communi- 

^ North's Life of Lord North. 

151 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

cated by a door into the gardens of the Inn. In 
1837-38, however, much rebuilding took place here, 
under the direction of Sir Robert Smirke ; but the 
hall was left untouched, and was then fitted up as 
a Court for Exchequer Equity sittings. Later it was 
used as a kind of state dining-room for the Serjeants 
and the Common Law Judges who, in those days, were 
always Serjeants. Another apartment used as a 
private dining-room contained, we are told by Timbs,^ 
one of the finest collections of legal portraits in London, 
including a specially notable one, by Cornelius Jansen, 
of Sir Edward Coke who was living in Serjeants' 
Inn at the time of the inquiries into the murder of 
Overbury. 

The Judicature Act of 1873 did away with the 
necessity for a judge to have been a Serjeant-at-Law, 
and about four years later the body which had by 
now a very small claim to existence, sold their Inn 
for £57,100 and divided the proceeds among them- 
selves — a circumstance which, as may be supposed, 
did not pass without adverse criticism. 

In May 1909, what was left of Serjeants' Inn was 
offered for sale, it being put up at the instance of the 
executors of Serjeant Cox. It was submitted as a 
building lease for ninety -nine years, a sum not less than 
£40,000 to be expended on the erection of new buildings. 
The area of the property was 16,600 feet, and it was 
secured by a bid of £3200 as an annual rent, represent- 
ing at twenty-six years' purchase a capital sum of 
£83,200. From an account of this sale we learn that 
there was a net charge of £180 per annum to the 
Bishop of Ely ; so that, through all the long course of 
years, the See retained at least a small hold on the 
property. 

^ Curiosities of London. 
152 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 



Serjeants' Inn, Fleet Street 

This property was, apparently so early as the 
reign of Henry iv., granted, in reversion, to the Dean 
and Chapter of York, by Henry Maupas and Thomas 
Maxey, clerks, for pious uses ; and Brayley ^ states 
that in the Inquisition, and also in the licence of 
alienation, it is described as " one messuage, and five 
shops, with sollers built over them, and their ap- 
purtenances, in the Parish of St. Dunstan in the West, 
in the suburb of London." 

There is some uncertainty as to when the Serjeants 
first occupied this Inn. Timbs, in his Curiosities of 
London, remarks that it was " about the beginning 
of the reign of Henry vi., and not before, that they 
resorted to the Fleet-street inn, which had a very fine 
chapel and hall, and a stately court of tall brick 
buildings." On the other hand, a later authority ^ 
says that " the Fleet Street Inn appears to have been 
a private dwelling in the reign of Henry viii.," and 
Noble asserts that between 1442 and 1474 the place 
had private residents. 

This latter statement is, I suppose, based on the 
fact that, in 1442, the Dean and Chapter of York 
leased the place for a term of eighty years, and at a 
rent of ten marks per annum, to William Antrous, or 
Antrobus, citizen and tailor, the property being 
then described as " unam messuagium cum gardino in 
parochia Sti, Dunstani in Fleet Street . . . quod 
nuper fuit Johannis Rote, and in quo Johanne Ellerker 
et alii servientes ad legem nuper inhabitarunt." ^ 
But this last passage would alone be sufficient to prove 

^ Londiniaiia. ^ London Past and Present. 

3 Dugdale's Origines Juridiciales. 

153 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

that lawyers had already been seated here, even if 
it was not fairly well authenticated that Antrobus 
himself was a steward to the Serjeants -at -Law, and 
dwelt in the Inn, in that capacity. 

About the year 1500, the Dean and Chapter of York 
again demised it, to Sir Lewis Pollard, Justice of the 
Common Pleas, Robert Norwich and Thomas Inglefield, 
King's Serjeants, and others, for thirty-one years, at 
a half-yearly rental of fifty-three shillings : although 
Antrobus 's lease had not run out — a fact which 
makes it still more probable that he was merely acting 
for the Serjeants, who thus obtained an extension 
of their lease by surrendering the unexpired term. 

Unfortunately Stow throws no light on the subject, 
merely stating that " Then is Serjeants' Inn so called, 
for that divers judges and Serjeants at law keep a 
commons, and are lodged there in term time." To 
add to the confusion, Mr. Thornbury states that in 
1627 the Inn began its legal career by being leased 
for forty years to nine judges and fifteen Serjeants. 

But this is, indeed, anticipating the course of events ; 
for, apart from its earlier legal history here traced, 
we know that, at the Dissolution of the Monasteries, 
the place was seized by the Crown on the grounds that 
its proceeds had been used to support certain Chantries 
connected with the Cathedral of York ; and that in 
1550 Edward vi. granted it to Sir Edward Montague, 
Chief- Justice of the Common Pleas, and John Cham- 
penet ; although it was subsequently given back to 
the Diocese of York, as the result of a trial by law. 

Its connection with York, at a later period, is 
proved by certain data concerning it, written by 
Archbishop Sancroft, in a book now preserved at 
Cambridge, from which Brayley quotes some entries, 
one of which tells us that, in 1608, the half-year's 
154 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

rent was £l, 13s. 4d. and 15s. for the Porter's Lodge, 
" which rent continued to the Distraction "... and 
that " Mr. Humble pays the Innc £3 per annum for 
opening his jett window into their yard." 

It was here, on June 11, 1629, that a full bench of 
judges decided that peers might be attached upon 
process for contempt out of Chancery — a blow to 
feudalism, which had very far-reaching results. This 
decision, signed by Chief-Justice Hyde and eleven 
other judges, is now preserved in the British Museum. 
The place was burnt in the Great Fire, but was rebuilt 
at the charges of five judges and ten Serjeants, a new 
lease of sixty years having been obtained in 1670. 

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the Inn 
contained quite a number of illustrious legal luminaries : 
two Lord Chief -Justices, Pratt and King; two Lord Chief 
Barons, Montague and Smith ; Justices Powys, Blen- 
cowe, Tracy, and Fortescue ; Baron Page, Sir Thomas 
Trevor,^ and a number of well-known Serjeants. 

Seven years later, however, the Serjeants gave up 
this Inn in favour of the one in Chancery Lane ; and 
subsequently Adam, the architect, erected the present 
structure, with a frontage to Fleet Street, for the 
Amicable Assurance Society. This in turn went else- 
where in 1865, and was succeeded here by the office 
of the Norwich Union. 

The arms of the Inn, a dove and a serpent, are 
introduced into the iron gate opening into Fleet Street. 
In the square behind are still some old houses, on one of 
which may be seen a stone bearing a coat of arms, 
the initials S. L, and the date 1669. There are one or 
two interesting facts connected with Serjeants' Inn ; 

^ Luttrell records his being made a serjeant, and tells how he 
invited the judges and the Lord Keeper " to a noble dinner at Serjeants' 
Inn in Fleet Street," on this occasion (July 5, 1701). 

155 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

in the first place, it forms a parish in itself, making its 
own assessments and contributing to the city rates ; ^ 
again, its pavement was formed out of some of the 
stonework of old St. Paul's ; and, lastly, it was one of 
the old-fashioned places which, unmoved by the pro- 
gress of science, kept to its lamps, long after gas had 
superseded them elsewhere. 

Beyond the famous men I have mentioned, I do not 
know of any one of importance as having resided in 
the Fleet Street Serjeants' Inn, except the great John 
Delane, of the Times, who lived at No. 16 from 1847 to 
the autumn of 1878. Here he received his innumer- 
able friends at his hospitable round table ; and here 
much of his remarkable editorial work was done. Mr. 
Dasent, in his Life of Delane, thus refers to the residence 
in Serjeants' Inn ; it was, he says, " an old house which 
had a certain quiet dignity of its own from its good 
panelled woodwork and well-designed staircase. . . . 
The house has been much altered in recent years, and some 
of the rooms, amongst them the dining-room, which 
has seen so many gatherings of wit and intellect, have 
been subdivided, but the seventeenth-century wood- 
work is for the most part still (1908) intact." The 
London County Council has placed one of its memorial 
tablets on the building. Before leaving Serjeants' Inn 
we must not forget that Thomas Coventry, the old 
crusted lawyer, to whom Lamb, in part, owed his first 
employment, lived " in a gloomy house opposite the 
pump " here. 

The Temple 

Before saying anything about the two Inns of 
Court which are situated within the precincts of the 

1 Noble. . 

156 




^ 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

Temple, a short account of that historic and supremely 
interesting spot itself must be attempted. So often, 
however, has the Temple been dealt with, not only in 
innumerable histories of London, but also in such 
specific works as those on the Inns of Court, by Herbert 
(in 1804) and Pearce (in 1848), that this large subject 
need, here, necessarily, be only treated in a more or less 
cursory way. 

The area under notice first became the home of the 
Knights Templars in 1184, when they removed hither 
from outside Holborn Bars, where they had been 
established just sixty -six years earlier. In 1185 the 
Temple Church was dedicated,^ and the place became 
known as the New Temple. The causes of the dis- 
solution of this great and powerful body need not detain 
us, for its annals can be read in Addison's History of 
the Knights Templars and in other works ; but there 
seems little doubt that, like many rich and wealthy 
corporations, it rose to a pitch of overbearing arrogance, 
little in keeping with its original intention, and when 
Spenser, in a well-known passage in his Prothalamion, 
says that the Templars " decay 'd through pride," he 
asserts a now pretty -well -recognised fact. It is known 
that, from whatever cause it arose, the Templars 
fell from their once high estate, an inquiry into their 
conduct having been held in St. Dunstan's Church, in 
1308, by the Pope, resulting in their dissolution about 
1310, and that three years after this, Edward ii. be- 
stowed their property, in Fleet Street, on Aymer de 
Valence, Earl of Pembroke. 

On his death in 1324 it passed to Thomas, Earl 

of Lancaster, but soon after reverted to the Crown, 

and was thereupon bestowed on the Knights of St. 

John of Jerusalem. By the deed incorporating this 

^ See chapter on ' Churches.' 

157 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

gift, not only were the outlines of the Temple clearly 
set forth, but provision was expressly made, that the 
public should have a right of entry to the Temple 
Church from Fleet Street, a privilege confirmed by a 
mandate, dated Nov. 2, 1329, from Edward iii. to the 
Lord Mayor, desiring him to cause the gates to be kept 
open for this purpose, during the daytime.^ 

As in the case of most rights of way, this one 
through the Temple precincts gave rise to various 
disagreements, and so early as 1360 we find the 
citizens complaining that the Prior of St. John of 
Jerusalem interfered with the free passage of goods un- 
loaded at the Temple Stairs, or Bridge, as it was in- 
differently called. Indeed, there is no doubt that, 
down to the days of Charles ii., and even later, the 
younger members of the Temple were as much occupied 
in breaking the laws as in studying them, for there are 
many references to acts of aggression against the 
citizens, in the authorities of the period, some of which 
I shall have occasion to speak of, later on.^ 

In the meantime, to follow the chronological 
history of the Temple, we find the King, in 1333, grant- 
ing the property to William de Langford, for the 
space of ten years, at a rent of £24 per annum, and 
by a decree of three years later, it was laid down that 
the boundary of the Temple Church extended to the 
old gate of the Temple, where some new houses, we 
learn, had shortly before been erected. This grant 
to Langford must, I think, have been of a certain 
portion of the property probably alienated from that 

1 Noble's Memorials of Temple Bar. 

2 Luttrell records the following : " Jan. 5, 1692-93. — One Batsill, 
a young gentleman of the Temple, was committed to Newgate for 
wounding a captain at the Devill Tavern in Fleet Street on Saturday 
last." 

158 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

bestowed on the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. 
Subsequently we find this body leasing the main 
portion to ' students at law,' at the instance of 
Edward iii. 

Unfortunately the history of the Temple during 
these years is rather obscure. We know, however, 
that during Wat Tyler's rebellion, in 1381, much havoc 
was done here, the lawyers' books and records being 
burnt in Fleet Street ; and that the students at law 
were eventually divided into two distinct Societies 
— the Middle Temple and the Inner Temple — each 
paying a rent of £10 a year. 

In 1541, or thereabouts, the Order of the Knights 
of St. John was dissolved by Henry viii., and the 
Temple thereupon reverted to the Crown, although 
the students at law still continued as tenants. Then, 
as previously, the two Societies of the Middle and 
Inner Temple were entirely disassociated. They 
paid their rents separately ; they added to their 
buildings separately (each addition generally taking 
its name from the Treasurer in office at the time, or 
from some notable member) ; and they kept their 
records separately. These records, including the list 
of officers, etc., begin, as to the Middle Temple, in 
1501 ; and as to the Inner Temple, in 1506. 

The first indication we have of the two Societies 
being treated as a single corporate body is in the reign 
of James i., when the King, by a deed dated Aug. 13, 
1608, granted the Temple to them jointly, although, 
as before, each was called upon to pay the £10 rent. 
By this deed the monarch reserved the right of nomin- 
ating the Master, a right still exercised, although, of 
course, the Temple has for many years been — ever since 
the days of Charles ii., indeed — the freehold of the two 
Societies. 

159 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 



The Middle Temple 

For the sake of convenience, and to avoid confusion 
as much as possible, I will deal separately with the 
two Societies who hold the Temple jointly, and will 
begin with that of the Middle Temple. 

The entrance to this portion of the Temple is, 
to-day, by the stone-fronted gatehouse which Sir 
Christopher Wren erected in 1684, and which Ralph, 
in his Critical Review of the Puhlick Buildings in London, 
describes as "in the style of Inigo Jones, and very 
far from inelegant." At an earlier period, however, 
there stood here that building forming an entrance, 
which Sir Amias Paulet, while a prisoner in the Inner 
Temple gatehouse, had caused to be built and adorned 
with arms and cardinals' hats, in order to appease 
the anger of Wolsey, whose prisoner he then was. 
Wren's gateway, which is an excellent piece of work, 
and an admirable example of the few buildings he 
erected to stand flush with the street, is too little 
regarded by those who pass by it ; it was set up after 
a fire, at the expense of the Benchers. 

The glory of the Middle Temple, however, is the 
Hall, built between the years 1562 and 1572, during 
the period that Edmund Plov/den was treasurer of 
the Society. Measurements go for little in the case 
of anything which chiefly relies for its attraction, as 
does this room, on the beauty of its carvings, but 
its excellent proportions can be judged from the fact 
that it is 100 feet in length, 40 feet wide, and nearly 
50 feet in height ; while its splendid open timber roof 
with its innvimerable pendants and soffits, its remote 
corners in which the echoes of so many eminent voices 
hnger in mysterious obscurity, is one of those things 
160 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

of beauty, to which distance lends an added enchant- 
ment. 

But it is, above all, the perfect Renaissance carved 
screen and music gallery which touches, or should 
touch, the nascent artistry in our composition. When 
the sun glints through the stained-glass windows on 
which are emblazoned the arms of notable members 
of the Society, and splashes the oak, softened and 
mellowed by age, with the remote hues of the rainbow, 
then, in this quiet haven of rest, the mind flies back 
to the days when the place was alive with the pomp 
and circumstance of great feasts ; when illustrious 
auditories listened to Shakespeare's plays, perhaps 
directed by the bard himself ; when men and women 
whose names electrify the dullest mind to alertness, 
sat and talked beneath that historic ' open timber 
roof.' 

Above all is this Hall notable, because here we 
know that Twelfth Night was performed, on February 1602, 
as recorded by Manningham, in a much-quoted passage 
in his Diary. This incident naturally stands out alone. 
But at the time it was but one among the usual 
Christmas revels which took place here, when plays, 
and masques, and feasts, at which royal and illustrious 
guests were generally present, were matters of course. 

The mention of Shakespeare reminds me that, at 
least once, he specifically mentions the Hall, in one of 
his plays ; for in Henry IV. ^ we find Prince Henry 
remarking to Falstaff, " Jack, meet me to-morrow in 
the Temple Hall." 

Some early references to the well-known theatrical 
tendencies of the members of the Temple are extant. 
Thus Machyn, writing in 1561, records how on " The 
xxvij day of December cam rydyng thrugh London 

^ Part I. Act iii. Sc. 3. 
L 161 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

a lord of mysrull . . . unto the Tempiill, for ther was 
grett cher all Cryustynmas . . . and grett revels as 
ever was for the gentyllmen of the Tempull evere day, 
for mony of the conselle was there." 

Again, in 1635, we find from another source that 
" On Wensday, the 23 of Febru... the Prince d'Amours 
gave a masque to the Prince Elector and his brother 
in the Middle Temple, wher the Queue was pleas 'd to 
grace the entertaynment, by putting off majesty to 
putt on a citizen's habitt, and to sett upon the scaffold 
on the right hand amongst her subjects." 

A later entry, from Wycherley's Plain Dealer, 
where Freeman remarks, " Methinks 'tis like one of 
their halls in Christmas time, whither from all parts 
fools bring their money to try by the dice (not the worst 
judges) whether it shall be their own or no," received a 
striking commentary when the floor of the Hall was 
taken up, about 1764 ; for beneath it was then found 
a large number of dice which had evidently dropped 
between the chinks of the boards.^ 

In these early days the members of the Temple 
appear to have been very much inclined to the free-and- 
easy manners associated chiefly with youth, for which 
the Universities were noted, and which produced those 
rules, still in force, which appear to our more sober 
days too puerile to be taken seriously. They were 
addicted so greatly, it seems, to the game of " shove 
and slip-groats," played with copper coins which were 
jerked with the palm of the hand from the edge of a 
table towards certain numbers marked on it,^ that 
this had at last to be forbidden. They were inter- 

^ Quoted in London Past and Present. Evelyn was made Comp- 
troller of the Revels, in 1641 ; and he speaks of going to see " the old 
riotous custom," in 1668. 

^ See Strutt's Sports and Pastimes. 

162 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

dieted, too, from carrying any weapon into Hall, and 
for good reason, as one of them, Sir John Davies (after- 
wards Lord Chief -Justice), ' bastinadoed ' a fellow- 
student, at dinner, for which the assailant was ex- 
pelled. And we know that the broils between the 
students and the citizens, chiefly those turbulent 
dwellers in Alsatia, were frequent and often anything 
but bloodless. 

But these matters are more to do with the social 
history of London than with its topography ; and it is 
more pertinent to return to the buildings which form 
the Middle Temple than to pursue the record of the 
life of those who inhabited them. 

The present library is modern, having been erected 
from the designs of Mr. H. R. Abraham, in the Gothic 
style, the roof being a diminished copy of that of West- 
minster Hall. This library is 86 feet long, 42 feet wide, 
and 63 feet high, and is lighted at the south end by 
an oriel window looking out on the famous Temple 
Gardens, with the barge-laden Thames beyond. There 
were, in addition to the oriel, seven high windows on 
each side and a large window on the north. The 
building was opened by the late King (then Prince of 
Wales), himself a Bencher of the Middle Temple, on 
Oct. 31, 1861. 

The earlier library is referred to by Hatton (1708) 
thus : " Here is a good Library near the back steps of 
the Hall, to which Sir Bartholomew Shore and several 
others have contributed books ; it is open for all 
persons about 6 hours in a day. . . . Here is this 
inscription over the door : — 

' ANNO DOMINI 1697 

BIBLIOTHECA ORNATA & AUCTA 

FRANCIS . MORGAN . THESAURARIC' " 

163 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

The Temple Gardens to which I have incidentally 
referred are, in one sense at least, the most notable 
part of the precincts, for if the rival champions of 
the Houses of York and Lancaster never did actually 
pluck their respective emblems from the bushes grow- 
ing there, Shakespeare, in a noble and notable passage, 
has made them do so, and this is better than history, 
for it has touched the imagination for all time, and 
has established the fact better than any chronicler 
could have done. No one can pace that beautiful 
oasis to-day without immediately calling to mind the 
scene with which Genius has immortalised the spot. 

There is, I think, no necessity for me to repeat the 
well-known passage here. Rather will I take the 
opportunity, before proceeding, of saying a word 
about the Temple Bridge or Stairs which gave access 
from the river to the Temple grounds. This bridge 
was formed by two stone arches into the Thames, 
and, as we have seen, was considered as the common 
property of the citizens. Indeed, when the question 
arose in 1360, as we have seen it did, the petitioners, 
of whom one John de Hydyngham was the leader, 
affirmed on oath that "time out of mind the common- 
alty of the city have been wont to have free ingress and 
egress with horses and carts, from sunrise to sunset, 
for carrying and carting all manner of victuals and 
v/ares therefrom to the water of Thames, and from 
the said water of Thames to the city aforesaid, through 
the great gate of the Templars, situate within Temple 
Bar in the suburb of London, and that the possessors 
of the Temple were wont, and by right ought, to 
maintain a bridge at the water aforesaid." ^ 

The Temple Stairs have long ceased to have any 
practical sense, for the Embankment has swept away 

1 Riley. 

164 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

all that foreshore which was once part and parcel 
of the Temple Gardens, and now, although there is, 
betv/een certain hours, a right of way up and down 
Middle Temple Lane, the idea of victuals and wares 
being carried to and from the Thames by it would 
be as surprising as if we met a megalosaurus dragging 
its slimy length towards Fleet Street by this via sacra. 
Before saying anything about the Inner Temple, 
let me set down the names of some of the more illus- 
trious ones who have been connected with the Middle 
Temple. Foremost of these was the learned Plowden, 
whose memory is perpetuated in the Hall and in the 
Buildings named after him, and Sir Walter Raleigh, 
certainly one of the Society's most illustrious members ; 
Sir John Davies, whom we have seen expelled, and to 
whom Jonson dedicated his Poetaster ; Sir Thomas 
Overbury, whose death in the Tower is still something 
of a mystery ; John Ford, the dramatist, Manning- 
ham, the diarist, and John Payne, the patriot ; Lord 
Clarendon, whose uncle, Sir Nicholas Hyde, was once 
treasurer ; Bulstrode Whitelocke, the ambassador ; 
and, as Walpole said of Richard Cambridge, Evelyn 
' the Everything.' Ireton, the Parliamentary leader, 
and Aubrey and Ashmole, the well-known antiquaries, 
were also members, as were the dramatists Shadwell 
and Congreve and Wycherley and Southerne, Later 
notabilities comprise Edmund Burke and Richard 
Brinsley Sheridan, and Tom Moore, and Havelock, 
the hero of the Mutiny. To name the legal luminaries 
whose earlier studies have been prosecuted under the 
aegis of the Middle Temple would be to write pages 
of names, many of now forgotten worthies ; but it is 
well to remember that Blackstone and Eldon, 
Stowell and Dunning, Lord Keeper Guildford and 
Lord Chancellor Somers were of them ; and that 

165 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Talfourd, to whom Pickwick is dedicated (this alone 
gives him immortaUty), and who is generally supposed 
to be the original of Traddles, was once a pupil with 
Havelock, in Chitty's chambers. 

Noble mentions a curious circumstance connected 
with the Middle Temple, not, I think, generally known, 
which may, therefore, find a place here. In the 
seventeenth century a member of the Society conveyed 
to the Benchers several houses in the City, the rents 
of which were to be used for paying the fees of two 
referees who were to meet twice a week during term 
time, in the Hall or elsewhere, to settle, if possible, 
such disputes as might be brought before them. 
Although these referees were duly appointed, there 
appears to be no record of any case being sub- 
mitted to their judgment ; and it is known that two 
of them, finding the place a sinecure, allocated the 
fees they received towards making additions to the 
library. Noble pertinently asks whether this arrange- 
ment was ever made publicly known, as he could not 
but think that, had it been so, the referees would 
hardly have found their office a sinecure. 



The Inner Temple 

This portion of the Temple possesses a gateway, 
but it is so shorn of whatever importance it may once 
have possessed that it can to-day merely be regarded 
as an interesting and not unpicturesque fragment.^ 
As the larger part of the Inner Temple was destroyed 
in the Great Fire, there is little left anterior to that 
period. It is due to this disaster that, unlike the 

^ See elsewhere in this volume for a notice of No. 17 Fleet Street, 
which was, and is, part and parcel of this entrance. 

166 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

Middle Temple, the Inner Temple only possesses a 
modern Hall. This building stands on the terrace 
overlooking the garden (known, nowadays, to so many 
who would otherwise seldom, if ever, penetrate its shy 
retreat, on account of the annual Flower Shows held 
here), and is close to the Library and the Parliament 
Chamber. Erected from the designs of Smirke, and 
completed in 1835, it is said to stand on the exact 
site of its predecessor which dated from the time of 
Edward iii. 

We have seen how the Middle Temple disported itself 
in masques and revels of all kinds, and we find that 
the Inner Temple was in no way behindhand in this 
respect. Indeed, its reputation for stage-plays was, if 
anything, the greater of the two, and the Hall that is no 
more, must have witnessed some notable performances. 

One of the earliest recorded of these was when 
Tancred and Gismund, written by Sir Christopher 
Hatton, in collaboration with four other students, 
was given before Queen Elizabeth, in 1568.^ In a 
Christmas masque, held seven years earlier. Sir Chris- 
topher had been " Master of the Game," and Roger 
Manwood impersonated a fictitious Chief Baron of the 
Exchequer, to which actual office he was, curiously 
enough, appointed in 1578. It was on the occasion of 
these revels, held on December 27, as recorded by 
Machyn, that the first English tragedy, Gorboduc, was 
performed. 

As is well known, Ben Jonson was a great writer of 
masques, and some of these were performed by the 
Templars ; as was the one, founded on the story of 
Circe and Ulysses, by William Browne, the disciple 

1 Not infrequently the members of the Temple performed plays 
before the Sovereign elsewhere than in their own precincts, as they did 
at Westminster in 1561. 

167 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

of Spenser, and better known by his Pastorals ; and 
another produced by Francis Beaumont, and entitled 
Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. 

According to Timbs the last revel in any of the 
Inns of Court, was that held on February 2, 1733, 
in the Inner Temple Hall, in honour of Mr. Talbot, a 
Bencher, having the Great Seal delivered to him. A 
large gallery built over the screen was filled with 
ladies, and music in the little gallery at the upper end 
of the Hall played all dinner-time. After dinner began 
the play, Love for Love, and the farce of The Devil to 
Pay, by actors from the Haymarket. After the play 
the Lord Chancellor, the Masters, Judges, and Benchers 
retired into their Parliament Chamber ; in half an hour 
they returned to the Hall, and, led by the Master of the 
Revels, formed a ring and danced, or rather walked, 
round the fireplace, according to the old ceremony, 
three times ; the ancient song, accompanied with 
music, being sung by one Tony Aston dressed in a 
Bar-gown. This was followed by dancing, in which the 
ladies from the gallery joined ; then a collation was 
served and the company returned to dancing. The 
Prince of Wales was present.^ 

In early days there is little doubt that the amicable 
relations of the City and the Temple were, if not exactly 
strained, at least liable to be interfered with on very 
slight pretexts. Such an occasion arose, in 1555, when, 
at a dinner given by John Prideaux, Reader of the 
Inner Temple, the members took umbrage at Sir John 
Lyon, then Lord Mayor, coming into the Hall with the 
civic sword of state borne before him, as an emblem 
of his authority, and we read that " when he was 
goynge, the sworde was willed to be bourne downe in 
the closter." ^ 

^ Curiosities of London. ^ Chronicle of the Grey Friars. 

168 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

Apparently there was a recognised opposition to 
this exhibition of civic jurisdiction on the part of the 
members of the Temple, for a somewhat similar inci- 
dent is recorded by Pepys, who heard from a Mr. Bell- 
wood, at the New Exchange, " how my Lord Mayor 
(Sir William Peake), being invited this day to dinner 
at the Readers' of the Temple, and endeavouring to 
carry his sword up, the students did pull it down, and 
forced him to go and stay all day in a private Coun- 
cillor's chamber, until the Reader himself could get 
the young gentlemen to dinner ; and then my Lord 
Mayor did retreat out of the Temple by stealth, with 
his sword up. This did make great heat among the 
students ; and my Lord Mayor did send to the King, 
and also I hear that Sir Richard Browne did cause the 
drums to beat for the Train-bands ; but all is over, only 
I hear that the students do resolve to try the Charter 
of the City." ^ On the following 7th of April the case 
was brought before His Majesty in Council, and Pepys, 
who was present, tells us that no result was come to, it 
being determined first to await a legal decision as to the 
City's jurisdiction over the Temple ; a question that 
has apparently remained undecided to the present day, 
the result being that the Temple is "extra parochial," 
closing its gates at ten o'clock every night, in defiance 
of the City's pretensions. 

In 1691, another disturbance of a more serious 
character, although one not having the possibility 
of such far-reaching results, occurred when the Ben- 
chers of the Inner Temple closed a door which com- 
municated from their precincts to Whitefriars. The 
lawless denizens of ' Alsatia ' chose to regard this 
as an interference with their ' privileges,' and as 

^ Diary, under date March 3, 1668-69. See, too, Pearce's History 
of the Inns of Court and Chancery. 

169 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

soon as the entrance was bricked up, unbricked it. 
Needless to say, this action led to a pitched battle 
between the Alsatians and the students, and resulted 
in at least two deaths. The leader of the former was 
a certain Captain Francis Winter. It was not till 
1693 that Winter was brought to trial, but he was 
found guilty of murder, reprieved for a time, but 
eventually executed in Fleet Street, " opposite to 
White Fryers," says Luttrell, adding that " he died 
very penitently ; and after he was cut downe from 
the gibbet, he was put into a coffin, and interr'd this 
evening." 

Luttrell gives the following account of the original 
circumstance : " The benchers of the Inner Temple, 
having given orders for bricking up their little gate 
leading into Whitefryers, and their workmen being 
at work thereon, the Alsatians came and pull'd it 
down as they built it up ; whereupon the sherifs 
were desired to keep the peace, and accordingly came, 
the 4th, with their officers ; but the Alsatians fell upon 
them, and knockt several of them down, and shott 
many guns amongst them, wounded several, two of 
which are since dead ; a Dutch soldier passing by 
was shott thro' the neck, and a woman into the mouth ; 
Sir Francis Child himself, one of the sherifs, was 
knockt down, and part of his gold chain taken away. 
The fray lasted several hours, but at last the Alsatians 
were reduced by the help of a body of the King's 
guards ; divers of the Alsatians were seized and sent 
to prison." ^ 

Among the famous men who have been connected 
with the Inner Temple was, as we have seen, Sir Chris- 
topher Hatton ; the Lord High Treasurer Buckhurst ; 
John Bradford, who was admitted a student in 1547 

1 Luttrell' s Relation, July 1691 and May 1693. 
170 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

and who died at the stake at Smithfield, in 1555, having 
been, three years earher, chaplain to Edward vi. ; 
Coke and Littleton, the great lawyers ; the learned 
Selden, who came hither from Clifford's Inn, in 1604 ; ^ 
Heneage Finch, Solicitor-General in 1660, and Lord 
Chancellor fourteen years later, being created Earl of 
Nottingham in 1681, with whom Charles ii. once dined 
in Hall, an honour then unprecedented ; the notorious 
Judge Jeffries ; and at least three poets : Francis 
Beaumont, who entered in 1600, and in 1613 produced 
his Masque of the Inner Temple ; William Browne, who 
wrote, inter alia, Britannia's Pastorals ; and William 
Cowper, who once meditated suicide in his chambers, 
whither he came, in 1755, from the Middle Temple. 

In order to deal with the various buildings con- 
tained in the Temple, other than the Halls about 
which I have already had something to say, I propose 
to take them alphabetically ; and I have left what 
references it seemed needful to make, to notable 
residents, to this portion of my subject, as by so doing 
we shall see better what parts of the Temple are 
hallowed by particular memories, than if I simply 
set the names down in the lists I have already given. 



Brick Court 

This court, appertaining to the Middle Temple, 
leads from Middle Temple Lane to Essex Street. 
It was one of the first buildings constructed of brick 
within the Temple precincts — hence its name — it 

1 He died in 1654, and his executors wished to present his library 
to the Inner Temple, but after being neglected in rooms in King's 
Bench Walk for five years, it was eventually bestowed on the Bodleian 
{London Past and Present). 

171 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

having been erected at the charges of Thomas Daniel, 
the then treasurer, in 1569. The north side has been 
rebuilt in recent times. Various notable people have 
had chambers here, but it is No. 2 which will always 
be chiefly memorable, for here Goldsmith lived and 
died ; here Blackstone preceded him ; here Thackeray 
once had chambers ; and here Mackworth Praed 
died in 1839. 

Much might be written of Goldsmith's sojourn 
here, indeed, much has been written by Forster, for 
instance, in his life of the poet. His rooms were on 
the right hand, " up two pair of stairs," and were 
once thus described by Thackeray : "I was in his 
chambers in Brick Court the other day," says the 
novelist. " The bedroom is a closet without any light 
in it. It quite pains one to think of the dear old 
fellow dying off there. There is some good carved 
work in the rooms," Hither Filby sent home that 
wonderful coat of which Goldsmith was so proud ; 
here his friends, Beauclerk and Oglethorpe, Johnson 
and Boswell, Langton and Percy and Reynolds and 
Bickerstaff, used to come and dine with him and 
admire the new furniture with which, in the flush 
of his success over The Good-Natured Man, the poet 
had crowded the rooms he had taken on a lease 
purchased for £400. Blackstone, engaged on his 
Commentaries, was used to complain of the noise 
made above him by his noisy neighbour and his 
cronies. 

From his windows Goldsmith was wont to watch 
the rooks in the Temple Gardens, and he speaks of 
this " colony in the midst of the city," in his Animated 
Nature. 

It was in these chambers that he died in 1774, and 
his books and furniture, removed from here, were sold 
172 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

by Mr. Good of 121 Fleet Street, in the July of that 
year.^ 

One of Shakespeare's innumerable editors, Edward 
Capell, died also in Brick Court, in 1781 ; while 
Thackeray took rooms at No. 2 in 1855. As we shall 
see, he had occupied chambers in other parts of the 
Temple, at an earlier date, where he had experienced, 
no doubt, many of the incidents which he narrates so 
vividly in Pendennis. At his death, the Middle Temple 
desired to bury him within its precincts. 

The old sundial, with its motto " Time and tide 
tarry for no man," still remains in Brick Court. 



Crown Office Row 

Just as Brick Court is indissolubly connected with 
Goldsmith, so is Crown Office Row with Charles Lamb, 
for here the latter was born on Feb. 10, 1775. 
The Row has been, in part at least, rebuilt, but, with 
its outlook to the Thames across the grass and trees 
of the garden, can still lay claim to be the " Cheer- 
ful Crown Office Row," which Elia calls it. His 
reference to the place is classic. " I was born," he 
says, " and passed the first seven years of my life in 
the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its 
fountain — its river, I had almost said, for in those 
young years what was this king of rivers to me but 
a stream that watered our pleasant places ? — these 
are of my oldest recollections." 

Crown Office Row was not quite forty years 
old when Charles Lamb first saw the light there, 
and so immortalised it, for it was erected in 1737. 

1 William Hawes wrote a well-known Account of the Late Dr. Gold- 
smith's Illness, in 1774. 

173 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

The subsequent rebuilding was based on designs by 
Sydney Smirke, and was undertaken in 1863, being 
completed, at a cost of £16,500, in the following year. 
Among other worthies who have lived in chambers 
here was Sir James Scarlett, at No. 1, in 1809 ; Lord 
Lyndhurst who came hither on leaving Cambridge ; 
and Thackeray who, with Tom Taylor, occupied rooms 
in No. 10, after he had been called to the Bar, in 1834. 



Elm Court 

This portion of the Middle Temple abuts on the east 
side of Middle Temple Lane, was originally erected 
in 1630, and perpetuates the one-time presence of 
elm trees here.^ It has been rebuilt, and much of the 
original material was sold in 1879. It was in chambers, 
on the first floor, in Elm Court, that Lord Keeper 
Guildford first began to practise at the Bar, by which 
stepping-stone he arrived so quickly to such marked 
success. I cannot find record of any other very notable 
people having been connected with Elm Court, so 
we may pass on to 

Essex Court 

This is situated, close to Brick Court, on the west 
side of Middle Temple Lane, and, of course, takes its 
name from the once neighbouring Essex House. It 
was here that Evelyn came to reside when he took 
up his residence in the Middle Temple (he had been 
admitted when yet at school, on Feb. 13, 1637) on 
April 27, 1640. " I repaired with my brother," he 

1 Vine, Fig-Tree, and Green Arbour Courts are similar cases where 
such natural objects are perpetuated. 

174 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

writes in his Diary, " to the Tearme to goe into the 
new lodgings that were formerly in Essex Court, being 
a very handsome apartment just over against the Hall 
Court, but four payre of stayres high, w'ch gave us the 
advantage of the faire prospect." 

A portion, at least, of Essex Court seems to have 
been rebuilt in 1677, for that date appears on a tablet 
between Nos. 2 and 3. 

When Porson, the great Greek scholar, came to 
London from Cambridge, in 1791 or 1792, he took rooms 
in No. 5 Essex Court, and here he remained for a 
number of years, pursuing the frequently uneven tenour 
of his way. Here it was, indeed, that once putting out 
his candle, in the midst of one of his Homeric de- 
bauches, he is described as staggering downstairs to 
relight it, and after many vain attempts, uttering 
his famous curse against " the nature of things." ^ 

Lord Lyndhurst, whom we have met with in Crown 
Office Row, also had chambers at No. 3 Essex Court, 
in the year 1803. 

Fig-Tree Court 

The presence of fig trees is not unusual even in 
such urban surroundings as those of Fleet Street. 
We know they grew " in some close places " near 
Bridewell, and that they produced fruit in the Rolls 
Garden ; ^ while the court we are now dealing with, 
takes its name from the same cause. It is a very old 
part of the Inner Temple, situated on the east side 
of Inner Temple Lane, having been partially erected 
in 1617, with additions some ten or twelve years later. 

^ Literary Landmarks of London, by Laurence Hutton. 
2 The City Gardener, by Thomas Fairchild, 1722. There was a 
Fig-Tree Alley in the Barbican. 

175 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

There are not many interesting associations with 
Fig-Tree Court, except such as are inseparably con- 
nected with the Temple as a whole, and its older re- 
maining buildings in particular. Lord Thurlow once 
occupied chambers here, as did the ubiquitous Lord 
Lyndhurst, and there once apparently resided here 
that shadowy Mr. John Mackenzie to whom Macpherson 
left £1000 to pay for the publication of Ossian.^ 



Fountain Court 

The Middle Temple possesses a fountain, the 
successor to an older one whose spouting powers have 
been recorded by Sir Christopher Hatton, and whose 
" low singing " inspired some of Letitia Landon's 
verses. It stood, as the present one stands, in Fountain 
Court, which is so named in consequence. It is by 
reason of this adjunct that Fountain Court is one of 
the pleasantest spots in the Temple ; but it also has 
another cause for being dear to us, for here Tom Pinch 
used to meet his sister Ruth, " because, of course, 
when she had to wait a minute or two, it would have 
been very awkward for her to have to wait in any but 
a quiet spot ; and that was as quiet a spot, everything 
considered, as they could choose," Dickens gives us 
another peep into the court, still in the company of 
Ruth Pinch, and under even happier circumstances 
for her, when she came there under the escort of John 
Westlock, and we are told how " brilliantly the Temple 
fountain sparkled in the sun, and merrily the idle 
drops of water danced and danced ; and, peeping 
out in sport among the trees, plunged lightly down 
to hide themselves." This is surely a better memory 

1 London Past and Present. 

176 




~- J i ' 






S 



^- , I 1 '■ 



' *■'"■ ""W»*»^ 



^*#w«l«>t •« ll><'l (^ • 







«ll» ,§RF?i .+ ,L.>. 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

than the one-time residence of legal dignitaries, or, 
as Lamb would have said, " old crusted lawyers " ! 



Garden Court 

is another part of the Temple which Dickens has 
annexed to his all-embracing domain of London topo- 
graphy, for in it Pip and his friend Herbert Pocket had 
their joint rooms. " Our chambers," says Pip, " were 
in Garden Court, down by the river. We lived at the 
top of the last house." Here Pip was visited on a 
memorable occasion by Magwitch, it will be remembered. 

Besides such associations, Garden Court has been 
the residence of more corporeal, if not more real, 
personages. Goldsmith lived here, in two separate 
sets of rooms successively, from 1764 to 1768. The 
first of these chambers was on the library staircase 
— for the Inner Temple Library was situated here, 
having been originally erected in 1641, and rebuilt in 
1824 by Sir Robert Smirke. 

It is interesting to remember that the son of Boswell 
who must often have visited Goldsmith ^ here, had 
chambers in No. 3 Garden Court at a later day, and 
that Francis Horner, the political economist, occupied 
rooms in the next set (No. 4) from 1807 to 1809. 

The gate leading from the court into the garden 
dates from 1730. 

Hare Court 

Hare Court, between Middle Temple and Inner 
Temple Lanes, takes its name from Nicholas Hare, 

* The modern Goldsmith's Buildings are, of course, named after 
the poet. 

M 177 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

who was Master of the Rolls in the time of Queen 
Mary, and who died in 1557, although the east 
portion was not erected till a hundred years after that 
event. 

Here stands the famous pump, referred to by 
Garth in his " Dispensary," and immortalised by Lamb 
in a notable passage in one of his letters to Manning : 
" Our place of final destination — I don't mean the 
grave, but No. 4 Inner Temple Lane," he writes — 
"looks out upon a gloomy, churchyard-like court, called 
Hare Court, with three trees and a pump in it. Do 
you know it ? I was born near it, and used to drink 
at that pump when I was a Rechabite of six years 
old ; " and he tells Coleridge, in a letter dated June 7, 
1809, that his new rooms look into Hare Court, 
" where there is a pump always going. Just now it 
is dry. Hare Court's trees come in at the window, so 
that it's like living in a garden." ^ If we are to take 
the delightful ' Distant Correspondents ' au pied de la 
lettre, then Barron Field, to whom Lamb addresses 
that most amusing of epistles, once had chambers 
close to those of Elia ; for the latter remarks : " I 
am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as when 
we used to exchange good-morrows out of our old 
contiguous windows in pump - famed Hare Court 
in the Temple. Why did you ever leave that 
quiet corner ? Why did I ? — with its complement 
of four poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed barks, 
the theme of jesting ruralists, I picked my first lady- 
birds ! " 

Thackeray, whom we have met with in Crown 
Office Row, appears to have occupied chambers in 
Hare Court while a student of the Temple, in 1831. 

1 I find I have quoted this before ; but Lamb bears repetition. 

178 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 



Inner Temple Lane 

The rooms which Lamb occupied, whose back win- 
dows looked into Hare Court, were situated in Inner 
Temple Lane. But this thoroughfare had become 
notable before Elia's time, from the fact of Dr. Johnson 
having once lived there. The portion of the lane con- 
taining both Johnson's and Lamb's former dwellings 
has been rebuilt, and is now known as Johnson's Build- 
ings — the old portion having been pulled down in 
1857, although Johnson's staircase was, very properly, 
preserved.^ The Doctor's rooms were in No. 1, and 
from his garret, which was very airy, Boswell records 
getting " a view of St. Paul's and many a brick roof." 
This garret was over Johnson's chambers, and served 
as his, apparently, very disorderly book-room. 

Boswell tells us of his first visit here : " His chambers 
were on the first floor of No. 1 Inner Temple Lane. . . , 
He received me very courteously ; but, it must be con- 
fessed, his apartment and furniture, and morning dress, 
were sufficiently uncouth . . . but all these slovenly 
particulars were forgotten the moment he began to 
talk." 

It would be impossible, in the space at my com- 
mand, to say anything about Johnson's life here, or of his 
many notable visitors ; nor is this necessary, as most 
people know their ' Boswell ' ; but one incident must 
be recorded, as one can hardly ever walk down Inner 
Temple Lane without thinking of it, and it has woven 
itself into the very stones of the street. Here is Bos- 
well's description of the circumstance : — 

" When Madame de Boufflers was first in England 
[said Beauclerk], she was desirous to see Johnson. I 
^ It was presented to the Crystal Palace in that year. 

179 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

accordingly went with her to his chambers in the 
Temple, where she was entertained with his conversa- 
tion for some time. When our visit was over, she and 
I left him, and were got into Inner Temple Lane, when 
all at once I heard a voice like thunder. This was 
occasioned by Johnson, who, it seems, upon a little 
recollection, had taken it into his head that he ought 
to have done the honours of his literary residence to a 
foreign lady of quality, and, eager to show himself a 
man of gallantry, was hurrying down the staircase in 
violent agitation. He overtook us before we reached 
the Temple gate, and, brushing in between me and 
Madame de Boufflers, seized her hand, and conducted 
her to her coach. His dress was a rusty brown morn- 
ing suit, a pair of old shoes by way of slippers, a little 
shrivelled wig sticking on the top of his head, and the 
sleeves of his shirt and the knees of his breeches hanging 
loose. A considerable crowd of people gathered round, 
and were not a little struck by this singular appearance." 

Johnson lived here from 1760 to 1765, and Boswell, 
in order to be near him, took chambers in Farrer's 
Buildings.^ 

Another notable resident in Inner Temple Lane, 
was William Cowper who came here from the Middle 
Temple in 1754 or 1755, and here attempted to put 
an end to his life, in consequence of an unprosperous 
love-affair. Here, too, at No. 5, once lived the future 
Lord Chief Justice Campbell ; but, after Johnson's, the 
chief association of the place is with Charles Lamb, 
who came to No. 4 in 1809 and left it in the autumn of 
1817. I have before incidentally referred to his resi- 
dence here, so I will content myself with giving a 
whimsical extract from one of his letters to Manning, 

^ The original buildings were pulled down in 1875, and have been 
rebuilt. 

180 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

written the year after he had come into residence, 
which describes his rooms Hke a vignette : — 

" I have," he writes, " two sitting-rooms : I call 
them so yar excellence^ for you may stand, or loll, or 
lean, or try any posture in them, but they are best for 
sitting ; not squatting down Japanese fashion, but the 
more decorous mode which European usage has conse- 
crated. I have two of these rooms on the third floor, and 
five sleeping, cooking, etc., rooms on the fourth floor. 
In my best room is a choice collection of the works of 
Hogarth, an English painter of some humour. In my 
next best are shelves containing a small but well-chosen 
library. My best room commands a court in which 
there are trees and a pump, the water of which is ex- 
cellent cold with brandy, and not very insipid without." 

It was while here that Lamb produced his unsuccess- 
ful farce of Mr. H. at Drury Lane ; collaborated with 
Mary Lamb in the Tales from Shakespeare ; and made a 
name as a critic by the publication of his Specimens of 
English Dramatic Poets. 

In London Past and Present, I find the fact recorded 
that barometers were first sold in London, by Jones, 
a clock -maker, in Inner Temple Lane, Jones being in- 
duced to do so on the advice of Lord Keeper Guilford. 



King's Bench Walk 

The picturesque row of houses standing at the east 
end of the Temple, at right angles with the river and 
facing Paper Buildings, is of considerable age — so far, at 
least, as Nos. 4, 5, and 6 are concerned, these dating 
from 1678. When it is remembered that Wren was 
responsible for these, little further need be said, although 
attention should certainly be drawn to the excellently 

181 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

proportioned doorway of No. 5 and its masterly design 
in rubbed brick relieved by delicately wrought Cor- 
inthian capitals in stone. No. 8 dates from about a 
hundred years later ; while some of the houses are as 
relatively recent as 1814, and a new range of stone 
buildings, designed by Smirke, was erected here in 1838. 

Shadwell, in his Squire of Alsatia, published in 1688, 
refers to the lawyers' chambers here, and the names of 
one or two later notable occupants have been preserved. 
Thus we know that one of Goldsmith's numerous 
residences within the Temple precincts was at No. 3, 
I imagine between his sojourn in Garden Court and his 
final abode in Brick Court. Certainly he was here in 
1765, as in the July of that year Sir Joshua Reynolds 
notes an engagement to dine with him here. 

At No. 5, the set with the beautiful doorway, 
Lord Mansfield, when plain Mr. Murray, had chambers, 
and was here visited by Pope. Rogers, who liked to 
trace the footsteps of distinguished men, once told 
Dr. Mackay that he used as a boy to make pilgrim- 
ages to No. 5, in order " to tread over the very steps 
where the feet of Pope had passed." Another notable 
person who sometimes called on the rising barrister, 
was the redoubtable Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. 
She seems to have made it a habit to come in the 
evening, to consult Murray to whom she had given 
a general retainer in her many legal actions. One 
night, returning from a merry-making with some of 
the wits of the day, he found his client impatiently 
awaiting him, and had to listen to a lecture from a 
past mistress in that art : " Young man, if you mean 
to rise in the world, you must not sup out," she told 
him. Another time she sat till midnight for him, 
and then left in a rage because he had not returned. 
His servant informed him that she would not give 
182 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

her name, " but swore so dreadfully " that he was 
sure she was a lady of quality ! ^ Lysons, the well- 
known topographical writer, and Jekyll,^ the in- 
veterate wit, both had chambers next door, at 
No. 6, a house in which Daines Barrington, familiar 
to readers of Lamb's essay on the " Old Benchers 
of the Inner Temple," died in 1800 ; and George 
Colman, junr., also occupied rooms somewhere in the 
row. 

Barrington was some time Treasurer. He walked 
" burly and square," Lamb tells us, and " did pretty 
well, upon the strength of being a tolerable antiquarian, 
and having a brother a bishop." But he could hardly 
have been a kindly creature, for an item in his annual 
accounts reads : " Disbursed Mr. Allen, the gardener, 
twenty shillings, for stuff to poison the sparrows, 
by my orders," a charge which the Benchers, to their 
credit, disallowed. 



Mitre Court Buildings 

connects King's Bench Walk with Mitre Court. This 
was another of Charles Lamb's Temple residences, 
for he came to No. 16 in 1800. As in the case of 
the Inner Temple Lane lodging, we have Elia's own 
description of his rooms and their situation : — 

" I live," he writes to Manning, " at No. 16 Mitre 
Court Buildings, a pistol - shot off Baron Maseres. 
You must introduce me to the Baron. I think we 
should suit one another mainly. He lives on the 
ground floor for convenience of the gout ; I prefer the 

^ Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices. 

2 " The roguish eye of Jekyll, ever ready to be delivered of a jest, 
almost invites the stranger to vie a repartee with it " (Lamb). 

183 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

attic story for the air. . . . N.B. — When you 
come to see me, mount up to the top of the stairs. 
I hope you are not asthmatical — and come in flannel, 
for it is pure airy up there. And bring your glass, 
and I will show you the Surrey Hills. My bed faces 
the river, so by perking upon my haunches, and sup- 
porting my carcass with my elbows, without much 
wrying my neck I can see the white sails glide by the 
bottom of the King's Bench Walk as I lie in my bed." 

A neighbour of Lamb's, and apparently a frequent 
evening caller, was Southey's friend Rickman, " the 
finest fellow to drop in o' nights . . . thoroughly pene- 
trated into the ridiculous wherever found, understands 
the first time." ^ 

The buildings have been rebuilt, but the pleasant 
memory hangs about the spot of Charles and Mary 
Lamb's joint establishment here; of Coleridge's visit 
here — marred, however, by one of Mary's periodical 
attacks ; of that noble, self-sacrificing life which made 
the intervals between these attacks periods of quiet 
happiness ; of those famous Wednesday evenings, 
which began in 1806, until the removal in 1809 to 
Southampton Buildings and the later return to Inner 
Temple Lane. 

Paper Buildings 

Paper Buildings, although now hardly to be termed 
picturesque, occupy an unrivalled position, for on 
one side they are ' over against ' the warm, red- 
bricked King's Bench Walk, and on the other enjoy 
the pleasant prospect of the Temple Gardens and the 
incomparable vista of what in the distance still looks 
like the silver Thames. Being rebuilt in a purely 

— ^ Lamb to Manning. 

184 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

utilitarian style/ with unornamented exterior and 
staircases suitable rather to a prison than a nucleus 
of chambers, it requires some effort of the imagination 
to people the present erection with the ghosts of those 
who inhabited its predecessor ; but this is so much the 
case with many other buildings in London that there 
ought to be little difficulty in doing so here. 

The original Paper Buildings dated from 1609, 
and are said to have been erected by Mr. Heyward to 
whom Selden, who shared chambers with him, dedi- 
cated his Titles of Honour, and others. They were, 
according to Dugdale, 88 feet in length and 20 feet 
broad, and consisted of four storeys. The Great 
Fire consumed them, but they were rebuilt in 1685. 
Fate was against them, however, for the rebuilt por- 
tion also fell a victim to the flames in 1838, and the 
present structure dates from about that period, although 
the red-brick portion fronting the Embankment, and 
irreverently termed ' Blotting-Paper Buildings,' was not 
built till 1848, having been designed by Sydney Smirke. 

In the original pile Selden had chambers in con- 
junction, as I have said, with his friend Heyward, and 
Aubrey tells us that here "he had a little gallery to 
walke in " looking over the gardens. It was here, too, 
that he was visited by a friend who told him he was 
possessed of two devils, and he informs us how he 
cured him, in the article on ' Devils ' in his Table-Talk. 

The fire of 1838 broke out in the chambers of Mr. 
Maule (afterwards Justice), noted for his irony and 
straw-splitting, at No. 14 ; and Lord Campbell, whose 
rooms here were just over Maule's, was burnt out, 
nothing of his possessions being saved. The fire is 

^ " That goodly pile of building, strong, albeit of Paper height, con- 
fronting with mossy contrast the lighter, older, more fantastically 
shrouded one, named of Harcourt" (Lamb, " Old Benchers "). 

185 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

said to have originated through Maule going to bed 
and leaving his candle alight by his bedside. Another 
notable man who once occupied chambers in Paper 
Buildings was George Canning ; while Samuel Rogers 
had the rooms here which had before belonged to Lord 
Ellenborough. Rogers's dining-room was on the ground 
floor with a view over the river, and he had had 
looking-glass inserted in the window -shutters in order 
to multiply this pleasant prospect. 

A hardly less real person than these very sub- 
stantial (one could hardly call the cadaverous Rogers 
substantial, though !) inhabitants is connected with 
this part of the Temple, for the Sir John Chester of 
Barndby Rudge had his chambers at, it is conjectured,^ 
No. 3, and was here visited by Hugh and Simon 
Tappertit and Gabriel Varden. It seems probable, 
too, that Stryver, for whom Sydney Carton acted as 
' jackal,' also had rooms here, for we are told how 
the latter on one occasion, " having revived himself 
by twice pacing the pavements of King's Bench 
Walk and Paper Buildings, turned into the Stryver 
Chambers." 

As is generally known, others besides legal lumin- 
aries are to be occasionally found in rooms within the 
Temple, and a friend of the writer has the most de- 
lightful set right at the top of Paper Buildings, where, 
like Teufelsdrockh, he seems alone with the stars, far 
removed from the noise and tumult of the busy throng 
below him. 

Pump Couut 

When Tom Pinch was installed as librarian to 
his mysterious patron by Mr. Fips, that eccentric 

^ By Mr. Allbut, in his London and Country Rambles with Dickens. 
186 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY^ 

gentleman " led the way through sundry lanes and 
courts, into one more quiet and gloomy than the rest ; 
and singling out a certain house, ascended a common 
staircase . . . stopping before a door upon an upper 
story." 1 This dwelling was in Pump Court ; and it 
was here, at a later date, that old Martin Chuzzlewit 
made himself known to Tom, and subsequently gave 
Mr. Pecksniff a dressing which even he probably never 
forgot. 

The court, of course, takes its name from the 
pump which may still be seen in the middle of it. 
It was here that the disastrous fire in the Middle 
Temple began in January 1679. As I have not 
mentioned this elsewhere, I will copy out Luttrell's 
account of the circumstance : — 

" The 26th (of January), about 11 at night, 
broke out a fire in the chamber of one Mr. Thorn- 
bury, in Pump Court, in the Middle Temple. It burnt 
very furiously, and consumed, in the Middle Temple, 
Pump Court, Elm-tree Court, Vine Court, Middle 
Temple Lane, and part of Brick Court. It burnt 
down also, in the Inner Temple, the cloysters, and the 
greatest part of Hare Court ; the library was blown 
up. The Thames being frozen, there was great scarcity 
of water ; it being so bitter a frost, the water hung 
in isecles at the eves of the houses. The engines 
plaid away many barrells of beer to stop the fire : 
but the cheif way of stopping the fire was by blowing 
up houses ; in doeing which many were hurt, and 
particularly the earl of Feversham, whose skull was 
almost broken ; but he is now in some hopes of 
recovery. This fire lasted till the next day at noon ; 
and, 'tis suspected, was begun by treachery." ^ 

^ Martin Chuzzlewit. 

2 A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs. 

187 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Two notable men had chambers in Pump Court : 
Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, as a student in 1710, and 
again, in a different set, when he began to practise, in 
1715 ; and Fielding, when called to the Bar, in 1740.^ 



Tanfield Court 

Originally this block of chambers was known as 
Bradshaw's Buildings, having been erected by Henry 
Bradshaw, who was Treasurer of the Inner Temple in 
the reign of Henry viii. At a later date, notably in the 
time of Elizabeth and James i., it had an important 
resident in the person of Sir Laurence Tanfield, who was 
Reader in 1595, Serjeant -at -Law in 1603,^ a Justice of 
the King's Bench in 1606, and Lord Chief Baron in the 
following year, and who died on April 30, 1625. It was 
after him that the court was renamed. 

Beyond the fact of Tanfxcld's residence here, the 
place has no particular memories except one, which 
gave it an anything but enviable notoriety ; for it 
was at one of its houses that, in 1732, Sarah Malcolm, 
a laundress, murdered Mrs. Buncombe and her two 
servants. Retribution followed on this ghastly crime, 
and Sarah Malcolm was executed, opposite Mitre Court, 
in Fleet Street, in March 1733. For some unex- 
plained reason, she was buried in St. Sepulchre's Church- 
yard, but her body was subsequently exhumed, and 
her skeleton is now preserved (though why, it is difficult 
to say) at Cambridge. Hogarth painted her (three- 
quarter length) portrait for Horace Walpole, who paid 
the artist five guineas for it ; and he also produced a 
full-length of the murderess, which once belonged to 

^ Lawrence's Life of Fielding. 

2 Manningham notes his creation, in his Diary. 

188 



THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY 

Alderman Boy dell. Sarah was a good-looking girl of 
twenty, and she elected to be represented in a red 
dress as likely to be becoming. Nothing, however, 
could hide from Hogarth her criminal expression, 
and he is said to have remarked that he could judge 
from her face that she was capable of any wickedness. 

With regard to certain other 'courts ' and 'buildings' 
in the Temple, little need be said : some of them are 
of quite modern date, like Plowden Buildings and 
Goldsmith Buildings, which perpetuate in their names, 
however, once famous residents ; Harcourt Buildings, 
named, I presume, after Lord Chancellor Harcourt 
(1661-1727), is known to have once contained the 
chambers of Pope's friend and legal adviser, William 
Fortescue, because the poet addresses a letter to him 
there ; Lamb Buildings, so called because of the sign 
of the ' Holy Lamb ' (the badge of the Templars) which 
may be seen over its doorway, and not after Charles 
Lamb, as might, perhaps, be supposed, was once the 
residence of Sir William Jones, from 1776 to 1783 ; 
while Vine Court also possesses but a single item of 
interest, in the fact that Sir John Finett's " Philoxenis " 
was sold, in 1561, " by H. Twyford and G. Bedell . . . 
at their shops in Vine Court, Middle Temple, and the 
Middle Temple Gate." i 

Before leaving the Temple, I must not overlook 
the Master's House which was erected for William 
Sherlock, who was Master at the end of the seventeenth 
century. It is a picturesque red-brick Queen Anne 
building, with a small garden in front, close to the 
Temple Church, and when creeper-clad, in summer- 
time, makes a pleasant spot of greenery amid its less 
rural surroundings. Here have resided the various 
masters since the days of William Sherlock. Of these 

^ London Past and Present. 

189 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

were Thomas Sherlock, the son and successor of 
William, afterwards Bishop of London ; Samuel 
Nicholls ; Gregory Sharpe ; George Watts ; Thomas 
Thurlow (Lord Thurlow's brother) ; William Pearce ; 
Thomas Rennell ; Christopher Benson ; Thomas 
Robinson ; Charles John Vaughan ; Alfred Ainger 
(dear to all lovers of Lamb) ; and the Rev. H. G. Wood, 
D.D., the present Master, who was presented in 1904. 
As will be seen, I have only been able to touch 
lightly on the history of the Temple, a history fraught 
with so much that is notable and interesting. Even 
what I have said about the structure itself seems, on 
re-reading it, slight and inadequate ; but had I done 
more, I should have found myself embarked on such a 
sea of data as would have kept me sailing through an 
ocean of print before I sighted land. 



190 



CHAPTER VI 

CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

St. Dunstan's 

The three churches of Fleet Street are St. Dunstan's, 
the Temple Church, and St. Bride's. Of these, the 
first I propose to notice is St. Dunstan's. The present 
church of that name is, of course, relatively a modern 
one, having been consecrated in 1833, but its predecessor 
dated from a time certainly anterior to the middle of 
the thirteenth century, at which period (1237) it was pre- 
sented to Henry iii. by Richard de Barking, Abbot of 
Westminster.^ It was, and is, described as St. Dunstan's 
in the West, to distinguish it from the church dedicated 
to the same saint between Tower Street and Lower 
Thames Street. Stow's meagre reference to the 
church is yet interesting as naming certain persons 
who were buried here before his day : — 

" The Church of St. Dunstan called in the West, 
for difference from St. Dunstan in the East, where lieth 
buried T. Duke, skinner, in St. Katherine's Chapel, 
by him built, 1421 ; Nicholas Conningstone, John 
Knape, and others founded Chantries there ; Ralph 

* It was assigned, with all its profits, towards the maintenance of a 
house, established by the King, for the reception of converted Jews 
(now called " The Rolls "), retaining for the Crown the right of 
advowson (Britten). 

191 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Bane, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield 1559, and 
others." 

In the year 1362, the church seems to have been 
in the possession of the Bishop of London, for it is 
known to have been presented by that prelate to the 
Abbot and Convent of Praemonstratenses, at Aln- 
wick, in consequence of a petition from the fraternity, 
complaining that their monastery had been destroyed 
during the Scotch wars, and that they were too 
poor to rebuild it. A member of their body was 
deputed to officiate at St. Dunstan's, but the Bishop 
reserved the right to remove him, if he thought 
desirable. In 1437, a perpetual vicar was instituted 
here. 

At the Dissolution the church became the property 
of the Crown, but not many years after — notably in 
1544 — it was granted to Lord Dudley, and subsequently 
to the Dorset family. From 1662 to 1820 it was in 
the hands of laymen, but in the latter year, the 
parishioners, by a special Act, purchased it, and con- 
stituted it a rectory. 1 

The earlier church stood farther into the roadway, 
than does the present exiguous structure which has 
become so built round that it might almost escape ob- 
servation. We can see what the original building 
looked like from various prints of it which are ex- 
tant, particularly from the one drawn by West and 
engraved by Toms in 1737. This shows that it then 
faced east and west ; that it had a tower and a battle- 
mented pediment over the lower windows ; while the 
famous clock is indicated as projecting over the street, 
and the two figures which struck the hours, and were 
such a source of attraction, can be seen plying their 
business within an elaborate kind of alcove. The 

1 Noble. 
192 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

old shops which once clustered around the building are 
also to be observed in this print. ^ 

It is impossible to tell what, if any, portion of the 
original structure survived to the eighteenth century ; 
although that part immediately abutting on Fleet 
Street, and known as St. Katherine's Chapel, was, 
as we have seen from Stow, built by Thomas Duke 
about 1421. What seems probable is that a succes- 
sion of alterations and additions gradually changed 
and enlarged the earlier church, rather than that it 
was entirely rebuilt. ^ " The building," says Britten, 
" had been originally in the pointed style of architect- 
ure ; but all the modern repairs having been exe- 
cuted in the Italian style, the whole presented, previous 
to its removal, a most heterogeneous appearance — 
a tower and turret with Roman doorways, pointed 
and circular-headed windows, rusticated stone-work, 
and embattled parapets." 

It was only by chance, however, that the church 
survived as long as it did, for it narrowly escaped 
destruction during the Great Fire which stopped 
only three houses east of it. 

Michael Drayton, the author of the Polyolhion, is 
said to have lived " at the baye window house next 
the east end of St. Dunstan's Church." This house 
has been supposed to coincide with No. 180 Fleet Street, 
and if this was so, then the Great Fire must have 
ceased immediately to the east of the poet's residence. 

The church was notable for the number of shops 
which clung barnacle-like to its south side and east 

1 Maurer produced a perspective view in 1752, and Malton two of 
the church in 1789 and 1797. 

^ Britten states that, in 1701, the old arched roof being much 
decayed, was taken down, and a new one, with a flat ceiling containing 
enriched sunk panels, set up in its place. 

N 193 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

front. These shops harboured all sorts of trades, but 
that of bookselling predominated, and the title pages 
of many a volume show that John Helme, Richard 
Moore, John Busbie, Richard Harriot, Matthias Walker, 
John Smethwick, and others, sold books " in St. Dun- 
stan's Churchyard," as it was called. It would appear 
from the full address of the last named, on a work 
published in 1611 — namely, " in St. Dunstan's Church- 
yard, in Fleet Street, under the Diall " — that there 
was a clock here previous to the famous striking one 
erected in 1671 ; indeed, Brayley, in his Londiniana, 
has fallen into the error of supposing the ' Diall ' 
to refer to the later clock which, in reality, was not 
set up till sixty years after. 

A still earlier reference to bookselling at this spot 
occurs on the title page of The PyJgrimage of Perfection, 
which states that its printer's (Pynson) press was " in 
Flete Strete hesyde Saynt Dunstan's Churche." ^ 

Two notable ornaments decorated the exterior 
of St. Dunstan's, the more noticeable being the clock 
overhanging Fleet Street, and the two life-size figures 
(representing savages, and known as the ' Giants of 
St. Dunstan's ') carved in wood which stood in a kind 
of alcove above it. Each figure was armed with a 
club with which it struck the quarters upon two bells 
suspended between them, and moved its head at the 
same time. This ingenious contrivance was made by 
one Thomas Harrys of Water Lane, who received 
for his work £35 and the old clock. Among the 
innumerable people who were wont to gaze at this 
marvel was the little boy who later became Marquis 
of Hertford, and when the old church was pulled down, 
in 1830, the Marquis secured for £210 what he 
had coveted as a child, and set it up at St. Dunstan's 

^ See chapter on ' Printers and Publishers of Fleet Street.' 
194 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

Villa, Regent's Park, where it still remains. Lamb 
shed tears at the removal of this landmark. 

The other ornament was the figure of Queen Eliza- 
beth, which stood at the east end of the church, 
above a cutler's shop. This figure, set up in 
1766, bore the following inscription : " This statue 
of Queen Elizabeth stood on the west side of Lud-gate 
That gate being taken down in 1760, to open the 
streets, it was given by the City to Sir Francis Gosling, 
knight and alderman of this ward, who caused it to 
be placed here." On the demolition of the church, 
the figure was sold for £16, 10s., and apparently lay 
neglected for some time, as we read in the Times for 
April 25, 1839, the following reference to it : " The 
workmen engaged some time since in taking down 
an old public house adjoining St. Dunstan's Church, 
in Fleet Street, discovered in one of the cellars the 
ancient stone statue of Queen Elizabeth, which formerly 
stood in the nave of the old church. The parochial 
authorities have resolved to place it on the south 
end of the church, fronting Fleet Street." Here it 
may now be seen. 

The old public-house referred to remained standing 
till 1859. It had been in the occupation of the Buttons 
for forty years. In 1750, it was known as the ' Haunch 
of Venison,' and later as the Clifford's Inn Coffee- 
House. An insurance office now occupies its site. 

So much for the exterior of the old church. The 
interior, according to Strype, contained a large number 
of monuments dating from the early years of the fif- 
teenth century, many of which were preserved and set 
up in the new church. Among these were memorials 
to the following : John Horsepoole, Rector of Aver- 
ham ; Roger Horton, one of the Justices of the King's 
Bench, who died on April 30, 1423 ; William Chap- 

195 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

man, died July 10, 1446, and Alicia his wife ; Richard 
Nordon, died March 23, 1460 ; Laurence Bartlot, 
died in October 1470 ; Sir William Portman, died 
Feb. 5, 1556 ; Sir Roger Cholmeley, died April 28, 
1538, and Ranulphus Cholmeley, died April 25, 1563 ; 
Laurence Dalton, Norrey king-at-arms, died 1561 ; Ed- 
ward Cordell ; Thomas Powley, one of the six Clerks 
of Chancery, who died on June 26, 1601 ; Thomas 
Valentis, died Sept. 23, 1601 ; William Crouch 
(a benefactor to the parish), died April 16, 1606 ; 
Mary Davies, daughter of Thomas Croft, and wife of 
John Davies of Hereford, who died on Jan. 1, 1612 ; 
and Margaret Talbot, who died on March 31, 1620, 
over whose remains these lines were inscribed : — 

" By this small Statue Reader is but shown, 
That she was bury'd here, but had'st thou known 
The Piety and Virtues of her Mind, 
Thou would'st have said. Why was she not Enshrin'd. 
Both Vere's and Windsor's best blood fill'd her veins. 
She matcht with Talbot, yet their noble strains 
Were far below her Vertue, in whose Breast 
God had infus'd his Graces above the rest 
Of all her sex whose sacred course of Life 
Both in the state of Widow, Maid and Wife ! 
(For each she had been, tho' her latter days 
Chast Widow-hood crown'd, to her immortal praise) 
Was so immaculate, she deserves to be 
The Crystal Mirror to Posterity ; 
More Honour hast thou by her burial here 
Dunstan, than to thee chanc'd this many a year. 
Earth from her Cof&n heave thy ponderous stone. 
And for thy sacred'st Relict keep her Bones ; 
Since spight of Envy 't cannot be deny'd, 
Saint like she liv'd, and like a Saint she dy'd." 

There were also monumental inscriptions to Nicholas 
Hare, who died in 1621 ; to John Harvey ; to Robert 
Houghton, one of the Knights Justices, who died 
196 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

Feb. 10, 1623; to Richard Hutton,i died Feb. 26, 
1638 ; to Albertus Otho Faber, who died on Aug. 15, 
1685 ; Elizabeth, wife of Roger North, one of the 
daughters and co-heirs of Sir John Gilbert, who died 
at the early age of 22, on Nov. 29, 1612 ; Mary Col- 
clough, daughter of Colonel Blagge, whose mother was 
daughter of Sir Roger North ; William Morecroft, 
who died Aug. 31, 1657 ; Mrs. Damaris Turner, of 
whom it is recorded that 

" In Youth, she liv'd betimes the best of Lives, 
For eighteen years, five months the best of Wives " ; 

Anthony Low, who died Aug. 10, 1684 ; Edward 
Marshall, Master Mason to Charles ii., vv^ho died on 
Dec. 10, 1675, and is buried near his wife, Anne, in 
the middle of the church near the chancel ; and Joshua 
Marshall, his son, also Master Mason to the Crown, 
who died at the age of 48, on April 6, 1678 ; Cuthbert 
Featherstone, who died on Dec. 10, 1615 ; Henry 
Jones, of the Inner Temple, ' clockmaker,' son of 
William Jones, heretofore Vicar of Boulder, in Hamp- 
shire, who died on Nov. 26, 1695 ; and others, including 
the well-known one to Hobson Judkins, the ' Honest 
Solicitor,' who died on June 30, 1812. 

The following verses on one Jane Watson deserve 
to be recorded if only for the beauty of the first line : — 

" In this Fair Fragrant Maiden Month of May 
When Earth her Flowre Embroydery doth display, 
Jane Watson, one of Vertue's Flowers most Faire, 
For Beauty, Wit and Worth, a Primrose rare, 
Adorn'd this Earth, changing Earth's marriage Bed, 
To joyne her Virgin Soule to Christ her Head." 

Machyn mentions the burials, in St. Dunstan's, 
of various people, some of whom are recorded in the 

^ His monument was executed by Nicholas Stone, who received 
^40 for it. 

197 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

list of monuments. Those given in the Diary are as 
follows : Judge Hynde, on Oct. 18, 1550, whose funeral 
was attended by some of his fellow- judges ; Sir Thomas 
Speke, knight, " of Chanseler [Chancery] Lane," 
July 12, 1551 ; Sir William Portman, Chief Justice 
of England, Feb. 10, 1557 ; Serjeant Wallpole, " a 
Northfolke man," Nov. 3, 1557 ; Dr. Owen Ogle- 
thorpe (spelt by Machyn, Hobbellthorpe), Bishop of 
Carlisle, Jan. 4, 1560 ; ^ Dr. Ralph Bayne, Bishop of 
Lichfield (Machyn gives no date of month, but accord- 
ing to the Registers, where the name is spelt Banes, 
it was on Nov. 24, 1559) ; Master Cottgrave, a relation 
of Anthony Toto, Serjeant -painter to Henry viii., 
Sept. 13, 1561 ; Master Laurence Dalton, Norrey 
king-at-arms, Dec. 15, 1561 ; Mistress Chamley, 
wife of the Recorder, in 1562 ; and Mr. Reynolf 
Chamley himself, on April 30, 1563, on which occasion 
there was an elaborate procession from the City, among 
the mourners being Sir Thomas Lee, Sir William Garrett, 
Sir Thomas Offley, and the Lord Mayor ; while we 
are told that " Master Goodman made the sermon." 

The Registers of St. Dunstan's are of particular 
interest because they contain the names of many 
who have become notable in a variety of ways. They 
begin on Nov. 29, 1558, and are unbroken from that 
day. Noble gives long extracts from them, from which 
we see that there were a number of foundlings baptized 
here (one was christened Charity Dunstone). Many 
" slained and buried " appear in the unruly sixteenth 
century, and a number of soldiers killed in the Civil 
troubles found a grave here. It is unnecessary to 
record all the names mentioned by Noble, because 
many of the more notable are to be found elsewhere 

^ In the Registers the date is given as Jan. 2, and the name spelt 
Eglethorpe. He was the bishop who crowned Queen EUzabeth. 

198 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

in this volume, as residents, well-known early book- 
sellers, etc. But one or two deserve special notice 
for other reasons. Thus, among the Baptisms, we 
find the name of a " son of Dr. William Bates," then 
(1654) minister of this parish, whose wife was buried 
" from the Vicaradge House, on Dec. 3, 1661." 

In 1567, Anne, daughter of John Bright, was 
christened at St. Clement's, and she is supposed to be 
identical with the young girl of that name buried 
in St. Dunstan's in 1589. In 1588 (Jan. 21), Gilbert, 
son of William Cavendish, Esq., Avas baptized here — 
he became first Earl of Devonshire ; five years later 
(April 22), we read: "Thomas, the sonn of William 
Wentworth Esq., baptised " (this was none other 
than the future great Earl of Strafford, who had been 
born in Chancery Lane, in the house of his maternal 
grandfather, Sir Robert Atkins, on the previous 13th of 
the month) ; and Bulstrode Whitelocke, the author of 
the Memorials, in 1605. On March 26, 1613, " Frederick 
Somersett, sonne to Henry, Lord Herbert, was bap- 
tised in the house of the Lady Morison, in the Fryars 
(Whitefriars)." Lord Herbert became notable as 
Marquis of Worcester, of ' Inventions ' fame. On 
April 13, 1618, we come across the name of Henry, 
son of Adam Newton, afterwards Sir Adam Newton, 
tutor to Henry, Prince of Wales ; and on Jan. 14, 
1620, that of Elizabeth Deborah, daughter of Sir 
Balthazar Gerbier the art-agent of Charles i. and 
the Duke of Buckingham. 

Among other notable names to be found are those 
of Tottill, the great printer, whose daughter Jane was 
baptized here on Dec. 18, 1558 ; Jaggard, several 
of whose children's names occur during the earlier 
part of the seventeenth century ; Simon Wadlow, 
whose son John was baptized on Feb. 8, 1623 ; and 

199 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Harbottle Grimston, whose children were also baptized 
in St. Dunstan's ; while in the eighteenth century is 
that of John Samuel, son of John and Hester Murray, 
born Nov. 27 in Fleet Street, and baptized on Dec. 
26, 1778 — this child being, in time, the second John 
Murray of the famous publishing firm. 

Turning to the Marriage Registers, only a few 
entries of any special interest will be found. Thus on 
May 28, 1571, Edward Bulstrode was married here to 
Cecily Crooke, the daughter of one Crooke who lived 
at the sign of the ' Chariot ' in Fleet Street ; both 
her brothers becoming knights. Edward Bulstrode 
was Sheriff of Bucks in 1585. In 1573 is the follow- 
ing curious entry : " July 16, Edward Borram and 
Elizabeth, w'^'' had like to have killed herself." In 
1591 (Nov. 21), Robb Bassett was married to 
Elizabeth Periam, who was daughter of Sir William 
Periam, one of the Justices of the Common Pleas. 
In Henley Church is a mural monument to Lady 
Periam. Robert Bassett was knighted in 1599.^ 

We also find that Jane Tottill, the daughter of 
Richard, was married here to Andrew Colthwaite 
on Nov. 24, 1578 ; that John Jaggard was married 
to Elizabeth Mabbe on June 5, 1597 ; and such entries 
as " 1608, Sept. 20. Symon Wadlow and Margaret 
Blott were married by license faculte " ; " 1629, 
April 16. Mr. Harbottle Grimston and Mrs. Mary 
Crookes by licence of the Faculties maryed " ; and the 
following, referring to the famous engraver : "In 
May 1654 was published the banns of marriage in 

1 Noble quotes Prince's Worihies of Devon thus, with regard to 
him : " Being, by his grandfather, descended from the Plantagenets, 
and of the Blood Royal, in the beginning of King James i.'s reign he 
made some pretensions to the Crown of England ; but not being able 
to make them good, he was forced to fly into France to save his head." 
His son became Colonel Arthur Bassett. 
200 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

Newgate Markett, uppon three several markett dayes, 
between William Faythorne of the parish of St. 
Dunstan in the West, Lond., Stationer, and Judith 
Grant, daughter of Henry Grant of Michael's, Cornhill, 
aged 24," are of special interest. 

An early eighteenth-century entry records that on 
Oct. 25, 1706, the marriage took place, by licence, of 
" John Wilkes of St. Andrews, Holborn, and Margaret 
Raine " ; while ten years later, on Sept. 10, Gabriel 
Beckford of Whit Parish, Wiltshire, was married here, 
to Hannah Barnard " of Ffinchley " ; and, perhaps 
more interesting still, on May 3, 1824, Lamb's friend, 
George Dyer, was wedded to Honour Mather here.^ 

Besides those already incidentally mentioned as 
having been interred here, the Burial Registers furnish 
us with some more notable names. For instance, on 
Jan. 6, 1567, " Lady Margaret Neville," one of the 
Fetter Lane family which gave its name to Neville's 
Court, was buried here ; on Jan. 16, 1616, Arthur 
Quarles, a relative of Francis Quarles of Einhlems 
fame, was laid to rest ; and on April 22, 1633, " Anne 
Quarles daughter of Francis Quarles was buryed " ; 
and another poet, Thomas Campion, described as a 
"Doctor of Physicke," on March 1, 1620. In the 
same year (April 1) we find an entry recording the 
burial of " Margaret Talbot, widow," to whose monu- 
mental inscription I have already referred ; and on 
March 30, 1627, Simon Wadlow, Vintner, was buried 
here " out of Fleet Street," he being the well-known 
proprietor of the Devil Tavern. ^ There are a number 
of entries in the Registers referring to Izaak Walton 

^ In this connection (Lamb's, I mean), it will be remembered that the 
toy-shop mentioned in Mrs. Leicester's School was situated near St. 
Dunstan's. 

2 See chapter on ' Fleet Street Taverns.' 

201 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

and his family ; his son Henry being buried on March 21, 
1634, and his wife on Aug. 25, 1640 ; while Thomas 
Grinsell, to whom Izaak Walton was apprenticed, 
is recorded as being buried here, on March 5, 1645, 
and Mrs. Grinsell, " in the body of the church out 
of Chancery Lane," two years later. Among other 
entries we find : " 1632, April 16. The Rt. Hon'ble 
George Lord Baltimore, from the back of the Bell " ; 
a number referring to the Marshall family, the most 
important being : " 1675. Edward Marshall buried in 
the church from Whtfryers " ; and " 1678, April 12. 
Joshua Marshall buried in ye church from Bridewell 
halle " ; "1681, May 3. James Farr, buried in St. 
Anne's Chapel from Fleet Street " — this being the 
famous proprietor of the ' Rainbow ' ; " 1622, April 30. 
Mary the wife of Mr. Thomas Johnson was buried," 
being one of the family from whom Johnson's Court 
was named, and whose husband, " citizen and merchant 
taylor," was a benefactor to St. Dunstan's ; " 1690, 
Sept. 9. Jonathan Swift a child owte of Whitefryers " 
— not the great man, however, who was twenty-three 
at this time ; " 1732, Nov. 21. Christopher Pinchbeck 
from Fleet Street," the inventor of the metal which 
goes by his name ; " 1782, Feb. 14. Benjamin Martin 
from Fleet Street, East Vault," a well-known optician 
and writer on scientific subjects, who lived at 172 
Fleet Street ; " 1793, Nov. 9. John Murray, from 
Fleet Street, North Vault," founder of the great 
publishing house of Murray ; and, " 1856, Nov. 4. 
Edward West from 29 Fleet Street, in the Catacombs;" 
he being the last person buried in St. Dunstan's. 

The Registers prove what havoc the various 
plagues made in this quarter of London. Some of the 
entries are marked with a P. after the names ; others 
simply consist of the word " Stranger," or more sig- 
202 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

nificantly, " Died in the Street," or " Out of the fields." 
The P. appears against no fewer than 568 entries 
during three months in 1665 ! 

Apart from the regular registers, the archives of 
St. Dunstan's contain a certain Register of the Pre- 
sentments of the Enquest of Wardmote, a folio volume 
in which are duly set down, from the year 1558, when 
it was given by one William Forest, till 1824, the 
shortcomings of the disorderly and unneighbourly 
portion of the parish. Some of the presentments 
recorded have been alluded to in the chapter on 
' Taverns.' Another point of interest in the entries, 
is that relating to the various charities in which St. 
Dunstan's was rather well off, among the benefactors 
being found Thomas Grinsell and Joshua Marshall. 
These charities included fifteen money trusts, six in 
bread, and four in coal.^ 

In connection with them must be mentioned the 
Free Grammar School, which was founded ^ by Queen 
Elizabeth, at the instance of Sir Nicholas Bacon and 
Sir William Cecil, in 1561. Although in the original 
deed this school was intended " for ever to continue," 
it seems to have come to an abrupt and somewhat 
mysterious end about the middle of the seventeenth 
century, the last appointment to it being dated, we are 
told, in 1632. Noble did his best to find out the 
reason for this, but without success. There was, 
however, subsequently an Infant and Charity School 
attached to the church, which benefited under the 
provisions of the ' Mathematical Charity ' founded 
by Joseph Neale in 1705. 

1 Noble. 

2 Perhaps ' refounded ' would be a better word, if the tradition that 
the school was originally founded by Henry vi., in the twenty-fourth 
year of his reign, can be substantiated. 

203 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

One of the most interesting facts connected with 
St. Dunstan's is the number of notable men who have 
been connected with the ministrations here. Thus 
William Tyndale did duty here from 1528 to 1536 ; 
Dr. Thomas White, ^ noted for his charities and for his 
foundation of Sion College, was vicar from 1575 to 

1623 ; Dr. Donne was connected with the church from 

1624 to 1631 ; and Dr. Bates, known, on account of 
his eloquence, as the ' silver-tongued,' was vicar from 
1652 to 1661, but at the Restoration had to leave, 
and thereupon set up his ' Conventicle ' at " Mr. 
Munday's, a Coffee-House over Temple Bar Gate," 
I suppose in the room afterwards used by Messrs. 
Child's Bank. 2 However, he v/as here again later, 
for we find Pepys going to hear him on Aug. 10 and 
17, 1662, on both of which occasions the Diarist was 
struck by the eloquence of the sermon and the vast 
crowds that flocked to hear the preacher ; indeed, 
on liis second visit Pepys had to squeeze in at a back 
door ; and when he again went, later in the same 
day, to hear the remainder of Bates's discourse, he 
was similarly incommoded. Five years later, he paid 
another visit to St. Dunstan's, when the Rev. John 
Thompson was vicar. On this occasion, however, 
his attention was so largely occupied by two " pretty 
modest maids," whose hands he tried to squeeze (in 
the second instance, successfully), that he could hardly 
have paid very much attention to the " able sermon " 
he professes to have heard. 

Richard Baxter was preacher at St. Dunstan's 
from 1652 to 1661, and, according to Roger North, 
" He (Lord Keeper Guilford) once heard (Titus) Oates 

1 There is a memorial to him in the cliurch, set up late in the 
nineteenth century. 

2 See chapter on ' Temple Bar.' 

204 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

preach at St. Dimstan's, and much admired his 
theatrical behaviour in the pulpit." 

Dr. Sherlock was a lecturer here in 1691, and from 
1749 to 1795 the famous William Romaine, in spite 
of strenuous opposition, drew crowded congregations. 
Romaine was one of the most popular men of the day, 
but a disagreement between him and the then Vicar of 
St. Dunstan's resulted in all kinds of impediments 
being put in the way of his preaching ; so that, it is 
said, the lights having been cut off, he was obliged 
more than once to preach by a single candle, which he 
held in his hand ! The crowds which flocked to hear 
him caused disturbances in the street, and the pew- 
opener reaped a large harvest, his emoluments from 
showing people into seats, and perhaps keeping places 
for favoured ones, amounting to no less than £50 a year.^ 
The Rev. A. B. Suter, afterwards a Colonial bishop, 
who was a subsequent vicar, should also be remem- 
bered, if only for his interesting pamphlet on The 
Worthies of St. Dunstan's. He was followed by the 
Rev. Edward Auriol, a Canon of St. Paul's. 

The present church was begun in 1831, and conse- 
crated on July 31, 1833 ; a portion of the old building 
being allowed to remain, as a sort of screen, ^ till August 
1832, when it was removed. The tower of the new 
church, with the graceful open lantern surmounting it, 
is one of the most successful works of its architect, 
James Shaw (who, by the bye, built the Great Hall of 
Christ's Hospital), and is not unworthy to stand in 
proximity to Wren's incomparable steeple at St. Bride's. 
It is built of yellow freestone, and was copied from 
that of St. Helen, at York ; it is 130 feet high. The 
church is octagonal in plan, is built of brick, and is 
in the Perpendicular Style. The altar is at the north 
1 Malcolm 2 Britten. 

205 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

end, and the window over it contains stained glass 
by Thomas Willemont. One of his earliest productions, 
it was placed there in memory of the Rev. E. Auriol. 

Among the monuments which may be seen in the 
present church, having been removed from the old 
building, is one in the south-west recess dated 1563 
and inscribed : " Gerardi Legh, generosi et clari viri 
interioris Templi socii Tumulus," with a long Latin 
' conversation ' following. There is also a memorial to 
Matthew, tenth son of George, Lord Carew, which was 
for long illegible. It begins with the words : " Qui es ? 
Unde venis ? Quo vadis ? " and states that the said 
Matthew, who was a doctor of law, " lived under four 
kings and two queens, and attended the Court of 
Chancery 33 years, under five Chancellors and 
Keepers of the Great Seal." It concludes thus : 
" Oh ! how many, and how strange things have I seen ! 
I have lived long enough for myself, if sufficiently 
for God. Thoroughly tired of the levity, vanity, and 
inconstancy of this life, I seek an eternal one, that I 
may enjoy God, and rest in peace. Amen." In the 
same part of the church there is also an interest- 
ing brass, luckily preserved, consisting of two kneeling 
figures, and bearing this inscription on a plate beneath 
them : " Here lyeth buryed the body of Henry Dacres, 
Cetezen and Marchant Taylor and sumtyme Alderman of 
London ; and Elizabeth his wyffe, the whych Henry 

deceased the day of the yere of our Lord God, 

MD^. and the said Elisabeth deceased the xxiiird 

day of Apryll, the yere of our Lord God, md''. and xxx." 

There are also several memorials to the Hoare family, 
particularly noticeable being that to Sir Richard 
Hoare, Lord Mayor of London in 1745.^ 

^ ^ A good architectui^al account of the church is given in Godwin 
and Britten's Churches of London. 

206 




S F i 



( 1 1. ft 

b r & ti 






* ♦ ii 




*/ * K, ^ * , Mis®*' 



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h»ifr'$k.4 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

In early days there was a rectory or parsonage 
house attached to St. Dunstan's, for in 1347 Clifford's 
Inn and its appurtenances being granted to David de 
Wollane (Commissioner for the Great Seal in 1354), 
he, in 1363, conveyed to John de Brampton, then 
parson of the church, " one messuage with the appur- 
tenances in the parish of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, 
for the residence of the rector of the church aforesaid 
for ever." For over three hundred years this was 
attached to the church, but in 1691, Noble tells us, 
" the impropriate rectory was devised with the advow- 
son to Mr. Samuel Grant, brother of the vicar, and he, 
about two years later, consented to the sale of the 
rectory house to a vintner." The site of this house 
was where No. 183 Fleet Street now is. 

We cannot leave St. Dunstan's without remembering 
that this was the church which Trotty Veck visited, as 
readers of the Chimes, who remember Stanfield's vign- 
ette on page 88 of that book, will hardly need re- 
minding ; and it was about its bells that Maclise's weird 
sprites (see the frontispiece and page 92) swarmed and 
clustered. 

The Temple Church 

Although the Temple Church (properly the church 
of St. Mary, London), as an integral part of the Temple, 
might have been dealt with together with the Inn of 
Court in whose precincts it stands, it seemed more 
convenient to notice it in the chapter devoted to Fleet 
Street churches, of which it is the oldest and in some 
respects the most notable. Its special interest lies in 
the fact that it was the place of worship of that famous 
fraternity the Knights Templars, before they fell from 
the great position they once held ; and also because it is 

207 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

the largest and best-known of the five round churches 
remaining in this country.^ 

The circular portion of the building was consecrated 
on Feb. 10, 1185, by Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, 
who had come to this country, with the Grand Master 
of the Templars, to try and interest Henry ii. in the 
Crusades. Fabian, who records the circumstance, tells 
us that, failing in his object, Heraclius's rage became 
ungovernable; but, to quote the chronicler, "The kynge 
. . . kepte his pacience and sayd, ' I maye not wend out 
of my londe, for myn owne sonnes wyll aryse agayne me 
when I were absent.' ' No wonder,' sayde the patryarke, 
' for of the devyll they come, and to the devyll they shall 
go,' and so departed from the kynge in great ire." ^ 

It seems probable that Heraclius had dedicated 
the new church before his interview with Henry. 

There was once the following inscription, in a half- 
circle, in Saxon characters, set up on the building, 
commemorative of its foundation : — 

+ ANNO • AB • INCARNA 

TIONE • DOMINI • M.C.L.X.X.X.V 

DEDICATA -i- HEC • ECCLESIA • IN • HONG 



RE • BEATE • MARIE • A • DNO • ERACILO • DEI • GRA 

SHE • RESVRECTIONIS • ECCELESIE • PATRI 
ARCHA • nil • IDUS • FEBRVARII • ^ • EA • ANNATIM . 

— I 

PETETIB • DE • IIVNTA • s * PENITETIA • LX • DIES • 
INDVLSIT. 



1 The other four are those at Cambridge, Northampton, Ludlow, 
and Little Maplestead, Essex. These churches, with the round portion 
at the west end of the oblong, were copied from the Holy Sepulchre. 

2 Stow, in his Annales, however, tells us that the King promised the 
Patriarch 50,000 marks of silver towards the expenses of the Crusade. 

208 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

A copy of this inscription was made in 1811, and in- 
scribed inside the church, over the west door. Pegge, 
in his Sylloge of Inscriptions, records the interest- 
ing fact that the indulgence mentioned is the earhest 
example of the kind he had met with.^ 

The circular portion of the church is now only 
used as a kind of vestibule to the oblong addition 
forming the choir, which was completed in 1240, and 
is a fine and pure example of Early English archi- 
tecture — so fine, indeed, that it has been said of it 
that " no building in existence so completely develops 
the gradual and delicate advance of the Pointed Style 
over the Norman, being commenced in the latter 
and finished in the highest of the former. The choir, 
or oblong part, is decidedly the most exquisite specimen 
of Early Pointed architecture existing." ^ There is a 
question as to whether there was originally an exten- 
sion of the church to the eastward, particularly as 
Stow speaks of the edifice as being " again dedicated 
and belike also re-edified " in the year 1240 ; but, 
however this may be, the present choir is consider- 
ably later than the round part of the church. 

The building is entered by a very fine and noticeable 
semicircular arched doorway, supported by columns 
with enriched capitals ; and this entrance, together with 
the ' Round Church ' to which it gives immediate access, 
is a mixture of the Anglo-Norman Circular with the 
Early Pointed Style, ^ known as the ' intermediate.' 

As this part of the building is of great architectural 
importance, I will set down a few technical remarks 

^ Weever supposed that a much earUer church stood here ; but if 
that was so, we have no certain record of the fact. 

2 Quoted by Bumpus in his London Churches, where he gives a 
most interesting account of the Temple Church and its architecture. 

3 Britten. 

o 209 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

made about it by God^Yin and Britten in their Churches 
of London : " An aisle is formed within the area by 
six chisters of cohimns, each consisting of four insu- 
lated shafts banded together near the centre for sup- 
port, and bearing pointed arches, the sofhts of which 
are divided into several mouldings. Above these 
arches, and on the same face (thus making the upper 
diameter of the building withinside less than the 
lower by the whole width of the aisle on each side), 
is a triforium, or gallery passing round the whole cir- 
cumference, and adorned by a series of interlaced 
arches ; while in the clerestory above occurs, over 
each arcliAvay, a semicircular window. From the 
abacus of each of the clustered columns (which is 
peculiar in its plan) rises a single shaft on the face 
of the triforium and clerestory to the top of the build- 
ing, and from this spring ribs which support a flat 
ceiling, apparently, hov.ever, not original. The groin- 
ing over the aisle, which is simple, is formed by cross- 
springers from the clustered columns to single columns 
attached to the external wall of the building, and 
has enriched bosses at the intersections. Upon the 
wall of the aisle there is a continued arcade adorned 
by a billet-moulding, and short colunms with enriched 
capitals ; and in the spandrels occurs a series of 
sculptured heads which are of masterly design, and 
display astonishing variety of character." 

These heads were sculptured in Caen stone, but 
those now in existence are copies in Portland stone, ^ 
put there when this portion of the church was restored 
in 1827, under the direction of Sir Robert Smirke ; 
a restoration commemorated by an inscription in 

^ Those on the north are supposed to represent Henry ii. present- 
ing the charter of a foundation to three Templars ; and on the south, 
Heraclius with three attendants. 

210 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

the most easterly window of the aisle. In 1839, further 
alterations were begun, and these lasted till 1842, 
costing in all some £70,000. As a result, the present 
appearance of the building, especially in the choir, 
is that of a modern replica of old work. It was during 
this restoration that many of the monuments were 
moved from their original positions. 

There is a turret to the north, at the juncture 
of the circular portion and the choir, in which is a 
tiny room, 4 ft. 6 in. long by 2 ft. 6 in. wide, approached 
by a small well-staircase. The object of this apartment 
is not exactly known, but as from it the altar may be 
seen through a ' squint,' it is suggested that it was 
appropriated to the ringer of the Sanctus Bell,^ or 
more probably as a penitential cell, for it was here 
that Walter le Bacheler, Grand Preceptor of Ireland, 
is said to have been starved to death for disobeying 
the orders of the Master of the Templars." Before 
the restoration of 1824, two small rooms existed on the 
south side of the circular portion of the church, reached 
by a doorway from the aisle ; but these were removed, 
much to the external improvement of the building. 

Apart from the beauty and interest of the ' Round 
Church,' and its importance as an architectural ex- 
pression, its most noticeable features are the two groups 
of sepulchral effigies which, mutilated as they are, are 
of the greatest importance. These are placed on each 
side of the aisle, and are carved in freestone. They 
represent ' associates ' of the Temple, and are prob- 

^ Mr. Worley, in his interesting little book on the church, reminds 
us that Roger de Hoveden in his Chronicle refers to the bells here, and 
their being stopped, as objectionable to Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, 
when he was lodging in the Temple in 1 192. 

^ His body was removed at daybreak and buried by Brother John 
de Stoke and Brother Radulph de Barton, in the middle of the court 
between the church and the hall. See Addison's Temple Church, p. 75. 

211 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

ably identical with the " eight images of armed knights " 
mentioned by Stow, although there are really nine of 
them. Like the other monuments which suffered, as 
did the whole building, from so-called restoration, they 
do not mark the place where those commemorated 
were buried ; and besides, they have been greatly spoilt, 
not only by the defacements of the ignorant, but by the 
attentions of those who ought to have known better. ^ 
The knights are represented in chain armour with sur- 
coats, and bear shields of varying length : with one 
exception, they lie on cushions, their feet resting on 
a recumbent lion or other animal. Six of them are 
cross-legged, which proves them to represent knights 
who either went to Palestine and laid their swords on 
the Holy Sepulchre, or even contributed money to 
the Crusades, or perhaps those who actually fought 
in the Holy Wars, although this particular attitude 
is not, as was once thought, peculiar to the latter. ^ 
One of them has a monk's cowl on his head, and one is 
bareheaded, but the rest are covered with mail-hoods. 
Those on the north side, i.e. our left as we enter 
the 'Round' from the street, are supposed to represent 
(1) Geoffrey de Magna ville. Earl of Essex, described 
as " Homo audacissimus et magnarum virium," and 
" Vir ferocissimus," ^ who was killed on Sept. 14, 1144, 
while besieging Burwell Castle, Cambridgeshire, in an 
insurrection against Stephen. He died excommuni- 
cated, and it is said that his body remained hanging 
in the Templars' orchard till, it having been proved 

1 In 1840, Mr. Edward Richardson restored them, in the main 
carefully ; but he covered them with a coating of bronze paint, and 
thus effaced the gold and colour distinctions which could be faintly 
traced before he began his work. 

^ Instances are known of female efhgies in this position. See 
Miles's History of the Crusades, vol. ii. p. 9. 

^ Will, de Novoburgo, Hist. Anglicana, vol. i. p. 35. ■, 

212 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

that he had repented during his last moments, it was 
buried in the Temple Church. Weever does not 
mention his monument, but Gough states that the 
earliest instance of arms on a shield which he had met 
with was on this very tomb. 

The effigy lying next, carved in Purbeck marble, 
and said to be the oldest in the church, cannot be 
identified. There is no cushion beneath the head, 
which is enveloped in a hood ; the legs are uncrossed, 
and the shield is a perfectly plain one. All we can 
say is that the figure represents a Knight Templar, 
although the fact that he has no sword is curious. It 
may be that the presence of a shield alone indicates 
that the person represented was ready to defend the 
cause of Christianity with monetary or other help, but 
that he took no active part in the Crusades. 

We can attribute no more certain identity to the two 
other effigies forming this group, one of which only has 
crossed legs. One of them has his sword on the right side, 
supposed by some to indicate a Crusader, and his helmet 
covers his mouth ; the other has his hands joined in 
prayer, and his feet rest on two small heads, probably 
intended to represent Saracens. 

The group on the south side contains (1) the figure 
said to represent William Mareschall, Earl of Pembroke, 
the great and powerful noble who held so many high 
offices, and under whose aegis Henry iii. reissued the 
Great Charter. He died on May 14, 1219. This monu- 
ment is carved in Sussex marble, and the Earl's sword 
is shown thrust through a lion's head. Camden speaks 
of reading on the upper part of the tomb the words : — 

" Comes Pertibrochise," 
and on one side : — 

"... Miles eram Martis, 
Mars multos vicerat armis." 

213 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Next him lies his son, William Mareschall, Earl of 
Pembroke, who married, en second noces, Eleanor, 
daughter of King John, and who died on April 24, 
1231. He is described by Roger de Wendover as 
" In mihtia vir strenuus." His effigy is a larger one 
than that of his father, and is distinguishable from the 
fact that the sword attached to it hangs on the left side 
of the figure, and is being drawn or sheathed by the 
right hand. Below the figure of William Mareschall 
the elder is an effigy supposed to represent his third son, 
Gilbert Mareschall, the fourth Earl of Pembroke, who 
was killed in a tournament at Ware on June 27, 1242. ^ 
He also is shown drawing his sword or returning it to 
its scabbard, and his left leg is twisted over the right, 
the foot being planted on a dragon. His body was 
brought to the Temple for burial, although its internal 
portion was interred in St. Mary's Church at Hertford. 

The figure beside him has not been identified, and 
may therefore simply be called a knight Crusader. It 
is carved in Purbeck marble ; the legs are crossed, 
the shield plain, and the sword worn on the left side, 
the right hand resting on the breast. A much smaller 
figure lying apart by the south wall of the ' Round ' 
represents a youthful knight having a cowl about his 
head, although his hands are mailed. Pennant con- 
jectures that he was represented thus, " as if, accord- 
ing to a common superstition, he had desired to be 
buried in the dress of a monk, lest the evil spirit should 
take possession of his body." There is some uncertainty 
as to whom this figure represents. Weever, on the 
authority of an MS. in the Cottonian Library, thought 
it was Robert de Ros, a Templar, who gave the manor 
of Ribston to the fraternity, and who died in 1245 ; 
on the other hand Gough, following Bishop Tanner, 

^ Doyle's Baronage. 
214 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

assigns it to the second Lord Ros, as the actual donor 
of Ribston, who died in 1227. It certainly bears the 
arms of the Ros family. Opposite this figure is a stone 
coffin which Gough conjectures to have contained the 
body of William Plantagenet, the fifth son of Henry iii., 
who died in 1256, and who was certainly buried 
somewhere in the church ; although one would hardly 
have thought that a child would have required so large 
a coffin.^ 

Had Henry ii.'s wishes been fulfilled, that monarch 
would have been laid to rest in the Temple Church 
instead of at Fontevrault, and the Purbeck marble 
sarcophagus which still remains is by some said to 
have been intended for his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, 
but her effigy is also at Fontevrault. 

During one of the restorations of the 'Round Church' 
(in 1841) certain sarcophagi were discovered, and the 
coffins they contained were temporarily removed, 
but were subsequently reinterred beneath the pave- 
ment of the dome. The remains of those who 
were buried in these coffins crumbled to dust on 
being removed ; none of them v/ere buried in armour ; 
and the coffin ornaments dated not earlier than the 
beginning of the thirteenth century. ^ 

In the triforium, a passage ten feet wide, encircling 
the 'Round,' and reached by a staircase in the wall, 
are several tombs, which seemed to Lamb's childish 
eyes " replete with devout meaning," removed from 
the space below. One of these is a coloured kneeling 
figure of Richard Martin, Recorder of London, and 

1 The description given of these tombs in Hare's Walks in London 
is misleading ; that in Godwin's and Britten's Churches of London 
bristles with inaccuracies. Those in Addison's The Temple Church, 
and Surge's book on the same subject, are safer guides, but best of all 
is that in Mr. Worley's book. 

2 Bumpus. 

215 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Reader of the IMiddle Temple, 1615, bearing the 
following inscription : — 

" Salve Lector 
Martinus jacet hlc ; si nescis cetera, quare 
Interea tumuli : sis memor ipse tui. 

Vale, Jurisconsulti. 
Accedit totum precibus quacunque recedit, 
Litibus eternum sic tibi tempus erit." 

Martin is shown kneeling with an open book held by his 
right hand on a desk before him. He wears a large 
ruff, and the drapery of his gown is cleverly carved. 

Another, also coloured,^ is an effigy resting imder 
a canopy, and commemorating the learned jurist, 
Edmund Plowden, who died in 1584, and whom Fuller 
praises for his combination of learning and honesty. ^ 
Close by, too, is the tablet to the memory of James 
Howell, who died in 1666, and whose letters — Epistolce 
Ho-Eliance, abound, as Warton says, with so much 
entertaining and useful information concerning the 
reigns of James i. and his successor. 

Among other tablets in this part of the church, 
many of which are of elaborate design, and some 
coloured, may be mentioned those to the memory 
of Edward Turner, 1623, and his son Arthur, 1651 ; 
to Clement Coke, son of the great Lord Chief Justice, 
dated 1629 ; to Roland Jewkes, one of Selden's execu- 
tors, 1665 ; to John Morton, 1668 ; to Miss Mary 
Gandy, who died at the early age of twenty -two 
(with a long poetical inscription), 1671 ; to Sir Thomas 
Robinson, 1683 ; to George Treby, 1700 ; William 
Freman, 1701 ; William Petyt, Treasurer of the Inner 
Temple, and keeper of the Records of the Tower, 1707 ; 

^ Brayley, in his Londiniana, says, " recently repainted in the style 
of former ages." 

^ His name is perpetuated in Plowden Buildings. 

216 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

and particularly noticeable is that to Mrs. Anne Little- 
ton, wife of Edward Littleton of the Inner Temple, 
and daughter of John Littleton of Franklyn, Worcester- 
shire, who died in 1623, which bears an elaborate coat 
of arms supporting an hour-glass flanked by wings. 

There are also memorials here to Peter Pierson ; 
Daines Barrington, known to readers of Lamb's Essays 
as an ' oddity ' who " walked burly and square " ; to 
Lord Thurlow, who died in 1806, and is commemor- 
ated by a bust ; to W. Moore (1814), whose monument, 
representing a woman mourning over an urn, was the 
work of Flaxman ; and to others. The marble slab 
erected to the memory of Goldsmith was set up in 
1837, and a tablet commemorating the renovation 
of the church bears the date of 1736. 

Manningham, in his Diary, gives the following 
epitaphs, as being in the Temple Church in 1602 : — 

" Hie jacet corpus Bellingham, WestmorlandiensiSj generosi 
et nuper Socij Medii Templi, cuius relligionis synceritas, vitae 
probitas, morumque integritas, eum maxime, commendabant : 
obijt lo Decembr, 1586, aetatis suae 22°." 

And on the south side of a pillar this : — 

* 

D. O. M. 

" Rogerio Bisshopio, illustris interioris Templi Societatis 
quondam studioso, in florentis aetatis limine morte immatura 
praerepto, qui ob fcelicissimam indolem, moresque suavissimos, 
magnum sui apud omnes desiderium relinquens, corpus humo, 
amorem amicis, coelo animum dicavit. 

" Monumentum hoc amoris et mceroris perpetuum testem 
charissimi posuere parentes. 

" Obijt 7° Sept. 1597 : aetatis suae 23." 

Nothing that finds a place in Gibbon's Auto- 
biography can be considered uninteresting, and one 
passage, which refers to one of his ancestor's tombs 

217 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

in the Temple Church, has a special right to be given 
here. The ancestor referred to was Edmund Gibbon. 
After describing his family arms, containing the three 
scallop shells, the historian of the Decline and Fall 
thus proceeds : "I should not, however, have been 
tempted to blazon my coat of arms were it not con- 
nected with a whimsical anecdote. About the reign 
of James i., the three harmless scallop shells were 
changed by Edmund Gibbon, Esq., into three ogresses, 
or female cannibals, with a design of stigmatising 
three ladies his kinswomen, who had provoked him 
by an unjust lawsuit. But this singular mode of 
revenge, for which he obtained the sanction of Sir 
William Seager, King-at-arms, soon expired with its 
author, and on his own monument in the Temple 
Church the monsters vanish, and the three scallop 
shells resume their proper and hereditary place." 

Before turning to the other parts of the Temple 
Church, I would remind the reader that the ' Round ' 
portion was, in the days of James i., frequented by 
the more questionable inhabitants of the neighbouring 
Alsatia, as well as by those who gained a livelihood 
or amused themselves by strolling here and else- 
where within the Temple precincts. These ' Knights 
of the Posts,' as they were called, are specially 
mentioned by Ben Jonson in The Alchemist, as mak- 
ing appointments at, or walking in, the ' Round.' 
Middleton also speaks of a client meeting his lawyer 
in the Temple Church ; ^ and both Butler {Hudibras) 
and Otway (in The Soldier's Fortune) refer to the 
habit, and show that it existed down to the end of the 
seventeenth century. 

The choir of the Temple Church was originally 
completed, as I have mentioned, in 1240, it being 

^ Father Hubburd's Tales, 1604. 
218 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

consecrated on Ascension Day in that year. Mr. 
Biimpus calls it " a magnificent transcript of the 
eastern chapels of Southwark Cathedral, being, like 
them, vaulted throughout upon pillars of equal height," 
and he adds that it is " probably about the most 
perfect specimen in England of this beautiful mode 
of construction." Like the ' Round Church,' it has 
been much restored — restored away, many think, by 
Smirke. The ornamentation of the ceiling is, of course, 
wholly modern, but the black and white banner 
of the Templars is frequently introduced, and their 
war-cry, ' Beauseant,' can be read there. 

In the south aisle is the monument of Sylvester de 
Everdon, Bishop of Carlisle from 1246 to 1255, in 
which year he died. It is hidden behind the stalls 
in front of it, and might therefore easily be over- 
looked. At one time this effigy — reclining, with 
crosier in one hand, the other raised in benediction 
— was supposed to represent the Patriarch Heraclius, 
and it was Gough who first made the more probable 
suggestion that it commemorated Bishop Sylvester 
de Everdon. On Dec. 7, 1810,^ according to Godwin 
and Britten, the tomb was opened, and within 
was found the entire skeleton of a man wrapped 
in lead, with a portion of the crosier by his side. Signs 
were present that the tomb had been previously 
tampered with, and the absence of the episcopal ring 
gives some point to the suggestion that it was probably 
rifled by the followers of Wat Tyler when they made 
havoc of so much property in Fleet Street. A more 
difficult point for solution is the fact that within the 
tomb were also found portions of the skeleton of a child. 
There is no possibility of ascertaining whose body 

^ Brayley {Londiniana) and Allen [History of London) say i8ii, but 
it is of no moment, 

219 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

this was ; but it has been suggested that it was no 
other than that of the WilHam Plantagenet whose 
burial here has ah-eady been referred to as taking 
place in 1256 ; though it is not clear why a king's 
son should have been made to share a bishop's resting- 
place. Perhaps it was found, at some subsequent 
time, and placed here as a convenient receptacle. 
On the other hand, it may have been some less 
exalted personage — a young kinsman of Sylvester, 
perhaps. 

Another noticeable monument, although a modern 
one, is the bust of Richard Hooker, which is on the west 
wall of the south choir-aisle. The bust rests on two 
volumes of the Ecclesiastical Polity. On the head is 
a square collegiate cap ; and the face, adorned by mous- 
tache and pointed beard, represents appropriately a 
youngish man — for Hooker was but thirty-three when 
he was appointed Master of the Temple by Queen 
Elizabeth in 1585. He held the appointment only six 
years — years marked by those constant controversies 
between him and Walter Travers, the Reader, which 
caused Fuller to remark that " the pulpit spake 
pure Canterbury in the morning, and Geneva in the 
afternoon." 

On the north side of the same wall is the tablet — 
black marble with a gilded inscription — to one of the 
most famous men connected v/ith the Temple, the 
grave and learned Selden. Selden's memorial is now 
close to the spot where he was buried, " near the steps 
where the Saints Bell hangeth," but at one time it was 
removed to the north-east corner of the church.^ 
Selden, who died in Whitefriars on Nov. 30, 1654, 
was laid to rest on the following 14th of December. 
The inscription on the tablet (in Latin and English) 

^ Worley. 
220 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

gives the outlines of his life, but properly leaves 
the record of his purity and scholarship to speak for 
itself. 

In the Diary of John Manningham of the Middle 
Temple, for the years 1602-3, there are, as might be 
expected, several references to the Temple Church. 
The diarist was a constant attendant at various City 
churches, and has left notes of the sermons he heard. 
Among these, I find him at the Temple Church, sitting 
under Dr. Montague, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, 
on May 9, 1602 ; on the following 13th of the month 
he heard " one Moore of Baliol Colledge " there ; on 
June 20, in the previous year, he listened to a dis- 
course by Dr. Buckridge, later Bishop of Ely ; and on 
Oct. 31, 1602, to " one Mr. Irland — a student of the 
Middle Temple." On another occasion he gives the 
points of a sermon preached here by " a good plaine 
fellow"; and on Feb. 6 he heard Dr. Abbot (he 
spells the name Abbottes), who was then Dean of 
Winchester, and in 1611 became Archbishop of 
Canterbury. 

Pepys, too, has several references to the Temple 
Church, in his Diary. Thus, on Nov. 25, 1660, we find 
him attending service there and hearing Dr. Wilkins, 
Cromwell's brother-in-law, and afterwards Bishop of 
Chester, preach ; again, on April 14, in the following 
year, he was there when Dr. Griffith, preacher at the 
Temple, gave a discourse ; and on April 13, 1662, he 
was present when " a boy being asleep fell down a high 
seat to the ground, ready to break his neck, but got 
no hurt." Later, on Oct. 22, 1666, a Monday, we 
find the Diarist visiting the church and " looking 
with pleasure on the monuments and epitaphs," a 
pleasure he repeated on Nov. 22, 1667, when he 
" walked a good while in the Temple Church, observing 

221 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

the plainness of Selden's tomb, and how much 
better one of his executors hath, who is buried by 
him." 1 

Before Smirke's restoration, the organ, placed over 
a screen, entirely blocked up the central arch between 
the ' Round Church ' and the choir ; and even the other 
arches were filled up with plaster above, and with 
doors having glass panels beneath. These obstruc- 
tions were properly removed ; but when one is apt to 
scoff at the vandalism that placed them there, one 
must remember that in the days when the ' Round ' was 
a loitering-ground for the idle or a place of meeting 
for the busy, it was necessary to screen off the main 
body of the church from such secular interruptions. ^ 

Outside the church, on the north side, may be seen 
some heavy tombs, while the pavement is formed of 
flat gravestones removed from the floor of the church 
at the time of the restoration of the building ; among 
them being those of Selden and Petyt. What attracts 
visitors, however, to this part of the ground is the 
unpretentious tomb of Oliver Goldsmith, with merely 
his name and the dates of his birth and death upon it. 
There is sufficient reason for this simple wording : first, 
because Goldsmith's fame has long since outsoared 
the necessity for a precise epitaph ; and second, because, 
as a matter of fact, the exact position of the grave in 
which the poet was laid on the evening of Saturday, 
April 9, 1774, has never been identified. Search has 
been made by such as John Forster (whose Life of 
Goldsmith is the standard work on the subject). Sir 

1 Selden's executors were Matthew Hale, John Vaughan, and 
Rowland Jewkes, to whom allusion is made, and who was buried here 
in 1665. Vaughan was also buried here in 1G74. 

* The font is a clever modern reproduction of the one in Alphington 
Church, near Exeter. 

222 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

Frederick Pollock, Canon Ainger, and others, but with- 
out success ; and in the Register can only be read the 
simple statement : " Buried, 9th April, Oliver Gold- 
smith, M.B., late of Brick Court, Middle Temple." 

On the south side of the church is the churchyard 
proper, and here may be seen eight stone coffins of 
ancient date, which were discovered when the old vestry 
and its adjacent buildings were removed in 1861. 

The conical top to the ' Round Church ' was added 
in 1840, in place of the turrets on the tower which were 
formerly there, as may be seen in eighteenth-century 
views of the church, and which were removed as prob- 
ably having been added long after the original structure 
was completed, during Tudor times ; although at least 
one ' Round Church ' is known with them dating from 
the period of its erection. The addition enables the 
building, otherwise securely hidden, to be seen from 
certain points (from Waterloo Bridge, for instance), but 
hardly adds to its beauty. 

In earlier days, vandalism permitted a dwelling- 
house to be erected over the porch itself ; but, curiously 
enough, we ought to be thankful for this, as it helped 
to preserve the old stone-work, which was merely en- 
cased, and which, when the addition was removed, 
appeared with a freshness seldom to be found in work 
dating from the twelfth century. 

A word must be said about the organ, which is one 
of Father Smith's, having been purchased, in June 1688, 
for £1000. Mr. Worley tells us that there was a long 
' Battle of the Organs,' as it was called, lasting over 
a year ; the question being whether an instrument by 
Father Smith or Renatus Harris should be chosen. 
Dr. Blow and Purcell played on Smith's instrument ; 
while that of Harris was manipulated by Baptist Braghi, 
organist to Queen Catherine at Somerset House. Judge 

223 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Jeffreys, as Lord Chancellor, finally gave the decision in 
favour of Smith. 

As is generally known, a Master and a Reader 
are the two chief clergymen at the Temple Church — 
where, by the bye, it is customary to use the curious 
and interesting Bidding Prayer before the sermon, 
the congregation standing while it is repeated. Among 
the more notable of the Masters, who date from 1540, 
have been William Emsted, the first to be appointed 
Richard Hooker, 1585 ; John Gauden (who claimed 
to have written Eikon Basilike), 1660 ; William 
Sherlock, the theological pamphleteer and author 
of the Discourse concerning Death, 1684, and his son 
Thomas, Bishop of London, 1704 ; and Alfred Ainger, 
the biographer of Lamb, and the pleasant wit re- 
membered by so many of us. 

In 1869, Charles John Vaughan was appointed, 
and a friend tells me of a curious episode during his 
incumbency. It is not usual to have an offertory 
at the Temple Church, and an innovation of this kind 
is resented by the Benchers. Vaughan, however, 
determined to have one, and announced the fact. 
But he had reckoned without the powers exercised 
by the authorities of the Temple, who can, at their 
pleasure, on Sundays close the gates of the precincts 
to the outside world. The Svmday on which the 
offertory was to be instituted arrived. But lo ! 
there was not a single attendant at the service. The 
members of the two Inns of Court made common 
cause, and refused to be present ; while the outsiders 
were unable to get in. Dr. Vaughan, recognising 
that he was in the hands of a mightier power than his 
own, gave up his point with the best grace he could. 
No threepenny-bits need therefore be hoarded by those 
who desire to take part in one of the most beautiful 
224 




sr. HKIDE S CHUKCll. 



To face page 225. 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

of services, or wish to hear some of the very finest church 
music and singing in London. What, however, they 
must be prepared for is the separation of the men from 
the women, which is too Hke the distinction between 
the sheep and the goats to be wholly pleasing to the 
male portion of the congregation, one thinks. 

St. Bride's Church 

The present church, dedicated to St. Bridget (or St. 
Bride, as it is now called), dates only from a year or 
two after the Great Fire. It was the work of Wren, 
and its famous spire, which Henley felicitously called a 
"madrigal in stone," is, with the exception of that of 
Bow Church, certainly the great architect's masterpiece 
in this direction.^ There existed a church at this spot, 
however, at a far earlier period than the seventeenth cen- 
tury ; although, unfortunately, very little is known of 
its history. It seems that this former church was but 
a small one, for Stow thus speaks of it : — 

" Then is the parish church of St. Bridges, or 
Bride, of old time a small thing, which now remaineth 
to be the choir, but since increased with a large body 
and side aisles towards the west, at the charges of 
William Venor, esquire, warden of the Fleet, about the 
year 1480, all which he caused to be wrought about in 
the stone in the figure of a vine with grapes and leaves." 

These architectural adornments were meant as a 
rebus on the name of the benefactor, which should 
probably have been more rightly spelt Viner.^ 

^ Flaxman did not appreciate it, and called it " an ugly thing, and 
better hid." 

" Prior Bolton and his Bolt-in-Tun at St. Bartholomew's, Smith- 
field, will occur to the reader as a parallel instance. Sir Robert 
Viner's munificence to St. Mary Woolnoth was similarly perpetuated. 
p 225 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

One of the earliest references we have to the 
original church occurs in the Liber Alhus, where 
we read, under date of 1235, that " On Sunday, 25th 
April, a stranger named Henry de Battle slew Thomas 
de Hall on the King's highway, and fled for sanctuary 
to St. Bride's. Here he was guarded by the aldermen 
and sheriffs, till examined in the church before the 
constable of the Tower, the sheriffs, and others ; when, 
upon confessing his crime, he abjured the realm." 
We know, too, on the authority of Strype, Maitland, 
and others, that St. Bride's had at least three Rectors 
before the year 1362, and that the advowson of the 
church belonged to the Abbot and Convent of West- 
minster, till they were dispossessed by Henry viii. 
in 1539 ; while Riley ^ records that, in 1413, two 
priests connected with the church were charged with 
criminal offences and suffered imprisonment for their 
misdeeds. 

Two other pieces of information about the church's 
history, prior to the Dissolution, may be mentioned. 
They are in the form of Patents preserved in the 
Record Ofhce, the first of which bears date Oct. 9, 
1509, and is directed to " Thomas Wolsey, King's 
Chaplain, Dean of Lincoln," granting to him the 
parsonage of St. Bride's, leased by the Abbot and 
Convent of Westminster to Sir Richard Empson, 
then attainted of high treason.- The second, dated 
Jan. 30, 1509-10, also grants to Wolsey, together with 
the messuage and garden (which had been demised 
to Empson for ninety-nine years on Nov. 26, 1508), 
the orchard, and no fewer than twelve gardens in the 
parish, between the said parsonage garden and the 

^ Memorials of London. 

^ He was executed, together with Dudley, it will be remembered, 
in this, the first, year of Henry viii.'s reign. 

226 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

Thames, which had been demised to Empson by 
Thomas Docwra, Prior of St. John's. 

After the Dissolution, Henry, having formed West- 
minster into a bishopric, bestowed St. Bride's upon 
the new See. When, however, Mary came to the 
throne, she restored the Abbot, and with him St. 
Bride's, to the resuscitated Convent. In the following 
reign this was again reversed, and the church has 
since then appertained to the Dean and Chapter of 
Westminster. 

What the old building looked like can only be 
approximately arrived at from a study of ancient 
plans, which, although giving a sort of bird's-eye view 
of London, can hardly be said to do more than roughly 
indicate the outlines of its buildings. From Wyn- 
gaerde's " View " (1543) we can see, however, that 
the original church had a square tower with pinnacles 
at the corners, and that this tower rose rather to 
the west end (although not quite at the end) of the 
structure, bearing a not remote resemblance, but on 
a smaller scale, to that of Southwark Cathedral. On 
the south side was a large entrance, and the north then 
immediately abutted on Fleet Street, By the time 
Agas produced his " Map " {circa 1560), a dwelling- 
house appears to have been erected between the 
church and the thoroughfare ; while in Faithorne 
and Newcourt's " Plan " of 1658 the edifice is shown 
as being quite surrounded by houses, with two narrow 
passages (the westerly one since enlarged into St. Bride's 
Avenue) leading to its extreme west and east ends. 

Although William Venor or Viner added the body 
and west aisles to the church in 1480, as we have 
seen, no screen divided the two portions of the build- 
ing till the year 1557 ; then, however. Stow tells us, 
" the partition betwixt the old work and the new, 

227 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

sometime prepared as a screen to be set up in the hall 
of the Duke of Somerset's house in the Strand, was 
bought for eightscore pounds, and set up." Just on 
forty years later, the same authority records : " One 
wilful body began to spoil and break the same ; . . . 
but was by the high commissioners forced to make 
it up again." ^ 

In the same year when this incident occurred 
(1596), Stow, in his Annales, records that " The 15th 
August, between the hours of eight and nine o'clock at 
night, a house of timber, lately set up very high, 
and not fully finished near to St. Bride's Church in 
Fleetstreete, suddenly fell down, and with it one 
old house adjoining, by the fall whereof the goodman 
named Cox with a man servant and a child were 
killed." 

From Machyn's Diary ^ we glean some interesting- 
information about burials in the old church. The 
first of these entries leaves the name of the church 
blank, but from a contemporary note in the Harleian 
MSS. recording the circumstance, we know that St. 
Bride's is indicated : " The xxv day of November 
(1558) was bered in sant . . . Flettstrett master Skynner 
sqwyre, on of the vj clarkes of the Chansere, with a 
harold of armes beyryng ys cote armur, and ys 
pennon of armes, and ij dosen skochyons of armes, 
and ij grett whyt branchys and xvj torchys and 
iiij great tapers ; and mony morners, and all they of 
the Chanserey." 

1 According to Stow, chantries were founded at St. Bride's by John 
Ulsthorpe, William Evesham, and John Wigan ; but he gives us no 
further particulars. 

^ From the same source I take this entry : " 1559. The xxj day of 
August dyd the veseturs sat at sant Brydes, doctur Home and ij 
more, for ij churche-wardens and ij more wher sworne to bryng a truw 
envetore of the chyrche." 

228 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

In the following year an unfinished entry tells us 
that " The x day of October was bered Bluw-mantyll 
the harold (John Hollingworth) the wyche latt was 
Rysbanke, in sant Brydes in Fletstrett." 

Again, in 1562, we read : " The furst day of Sep- 
tember was bered in the parryche of sant Brydes, in 
Fletstrett, master Hulsun skrevener of London and 
master Keyword's depute, and on of the masturs of 
Brydwell ; and ther wher all the masturs of Bry dwell 
with gren stayffes in ther handes, and the children of 
the hospetall, at ys berehyng ; and ther was mony 
mornars in blake, and master Crowley dyd pryche ; 
and there was grett ryngyng as ever was hard." 

Later in the same year is this record : " The ij day 
of Desember was bered mastores Welles the ... of 
master Clarenshux kyng of armes (William Harvey) 
with a palle of blake velvet . . . and master Clarenshux 
and the . . . wher the mornars, and browtt to the 
chyrche of sant Brydes ; and master Phylpott made the 
sermon." 

The last of these entries is in the beginning of 
the year 1563, and runs thus : " The xx day of 
Feybruary was bered at sant Brydes in Fletestrett 
master Denham sqwyre, and the chyrche ther was 
mad rayled and hangyd with blake and armes, and 
he was cared to the chyrche, a-for him a mornar 
bayryng a pennon of armes, and after cam a harold of 
armes bayryng ys cott armur, and then cam the 
corse with a palle of blake velvett with armes on yt, 
and iiij of ys men bare hym ; and then the mornars, 
the cheyffe was ser Recherd Sakfeld,^ and a xx mo 
mornars ; and the dene of Westmynster mad the 
sermon." 

Machyn has one record of a christening in St. Bride's, 

^ Sackville, father of the first Earl of Dorset, of the Sackville line. 

229 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

and it is interesting as being that of the daughter of 
the Wilham Harvey referred to above. It took place 
in July 1562, the godfather being " Cordall ^ master 
of the rolles knyght," and the godmothers " my lade 
Bacon my lord keper's wyff, and my lade Sysselle ^ 
wyff of Sir Wylliam Sysselle." 

In addition to the burials mentioned by Machyn, 
a few others deserve to be recorded. Of these by far 
the most interesting was that of Wynkyn de Worde, 
the follower of Caxton, of whom I have something to 
say in another chapter. This great printer died about 
the year 1534 (his will was proved in January 1535), 
and he left directions that he should be buried before the 
high altar of St. Katherine, in St. Bride's. He be- 
queathed £36 to the parish for the purchase of land, 
for the purpose of providing, out of the rents of the 
property, a funeral service on the anniversary of his 
death, for ever. Yet is this day forgotten, and strangers 
to his kin must be enjoying the fruits of his bequest. 

Others interred here were Richard Heywood, pro- 
thonotary of the King's Bench in 1570 ; the viscera 
of Thomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset, who died on 
April 19, 1608, and whom Naunton, in his Fragmenta 
Regalia, describes as " a very fine gentleman of person 
and endowments " ; Edward Semer, Lord Breeham, 
1618 ; Sir Henry Lellow, Warden of the Fleet, 1630 ; Sir 
Henry Baker, the author of the well-knov/n Chronicles, 
who died a prisoner in the Fleet in 1644 ; Henry 
Hopkins, Warden of the Fleet, 1655 ; and, more interest- 
ing, Richard Lovelace, the poet of the two imperishable 
lyrics, who died in 1658. 

1 Sir William Cordell, Speaker in the fifth Parliament of Queen 
Mary, and knighted and made Master of the Rolls by that Queen. He 
founded a hospital at Long Melford. See the Egerton Papers. 

2 Cecil. 

280 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

Six years later, Thomas Pepys, brother of the 
Diarist, died, and was buried in St. Bride's. In the 
Diary is the following reference to the circumstance : — 

" March 18, 1663-64. ... To church, and, with the 
grave-maker, chose a place for my brother to lie in, 
just under my mother's pew. But to see how a man's 
tombes are at the mercy of such a fellow, that for six- 
pence he would, as his own words were, ' I will justle 
them together but I will make room for him ' ; speaking 
of the fulness of the middle aisle, where he was to lie." 

After entertaining the mourners, Pepys, with his 
friends, followed the body to St. Bride's. " Anon to 
church," he says, " walking out into the street to the 
conduit, and so across the street : ^ and had a very good 
company along with the corps. And, being come to 
the grave as above, Dr. Pierson, the minister of the 
parish, did read the service for buriall : and so I saw my 
poor brother laid into the grave." 

I may mention here that Pepys had previously 
visited the church on at least two occasions : once, 
on Feb. 16, 1661-62, when he heard Dr. Jacomb preach 
" a pretty good sermon, though not extraordinary " ; 
and again, on the following 10th of August, on which 
occasion he heard " one Carpenter, an old man, who, 
they say, hath been a Jesuite priest, and is come over to 
us ; but he preached very well." 

The original burial-ground of the church was on its 
south side, almost abutting on the grounds of Dorset 
House. As this proximity was distasteful to the 
occupants of that mansion,^ the second Earl of Dorset, 

1 Thomas Pepys, therefore, probably lived on the north side of 
Fleet Street, in his father's house. Samuel speaks of going to this 
house on Jan. i, i6Go, and observing on the way " the great posts set 
up at the Conduit in Fleet Sti-eet." 

^ See Chapter II. for some further notice of it. 

231 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

who had only recently succeeded to the title, gave to 
the Parish, in 1610, a large piece of ground on the west 
side of Farringdon Street for a cemetery, on condition 
that the old ground should be disused. This arrange- 
ment was agreed to ; but when, in 1666, Dorset House 
was burned down, the parishioners obtained an annul- 
ment of the restriction.^ It seems probable that the 
new ground, large as it was, may have been quickly 
filled up during the Plague, and thus the Parish was 
glad to have additional room for its dead. 

The Great Fire, which caused the destruction of 
Dorset House, burnt down St. Bride's Church, and 
practically nothing of the original seems to have escaped 
but the marble font which had been presented to the 
church by Henry Hothersall, in 1615, and the entrance 
to the vault of the Holden family, erected in 1657 on 
the north side of the building. 

For a number of years the parishioners appear 
to have done without a church, probably attending 
at St. Dunstan's and other places of worship in the 
locality, for it was not till 1678 that Wren began the 
plans of the new edifice, and not till two years later 
that it was made ready for use. Even then it was not 
by any means complete, for, in 1699, it was further 
embellished, and it was not till Oct. 4, 1701, that the 
first stone of the tower and spire was laid, the whole 
being completed, even to the weathercock, in Sep- 
tember 1703.2 

Originally, the spire and tower were together 234 ft. 
6 in. in height " from the surface of ye earth to ye 
top of ye cross," ^ but in 1764, the steeple having 
been struck by lightning, it was lowered 85 feet. 
Noble tells us that the upper portion remained for 
many years in the yard of a stone-mason in Old 

1 Godwin and Britten. - The rarochial Records. ' Ibid. 

282 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

Street, St. Luke's. Great damage was done both to 
the church and surrounding houses by the falHng 
masonry on this occasion ; and it was determined, in 
rebuilding the spire, to lower it permanently by eight 
feet, the work being entrusted to the City pavior and 
stone-mason and Mr. Staines (afterwards Sir William 
Staines), " so little taste unfortunately was then to be 
found in the parish." ^ The present height of the tower 
and steeple is therefore 226 feet. William Dickenson 
was the superintending surveyor under Wren in the 
building of St. Bride's ; the cost of the whole being 
given as £11,430 ; while the damage done by the 
storm of 1764 was estimated at £3000. 

There is no necessity to give here a detailed or 
technical description of either the exterior or the 
interior of St. Bride's, as, owing chiefly to the beauty 
of its spire, it is probably one of the best-known churches 
in London ; and it has been fully dealt with in the 
large number of books devoted to the architectural 
masterpieces of the City. The repetition of design 
in the steeple has been, it is true, pointed at by the 
hypercritical as an example of want of inventive- 
ness ; but Wren's fame need fear nothing from such 
a charge. He has too clearly proved, in numberless 
instances, that when he chose he could be inventive 
to the top of his bent. His greatness here is pre- 
cisely shown in the using of a repeated design in such 
a masterly way as to strip it of any appearance of 
monotony. The more one studies St. Bride's steeple 
the greater will be one's appreciation for the supreme 
architect who conceived it. 

If the interior cannot rank with such masterpieces 
as those of St. Mary, Aldermary, or St. Stephen's, Wal- 

1 Allen, History of London. The spire was again struck in 1803, 
after which the autliorities thought of putting up a conductor ! 

233 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

brook, it has, nevertheless, the merit which is never 
absent from Wren's work : that of classical dignity 
and appropriateness. As in many of his interiors, 
one feels that a giant has here, perforce, cramped his 
ideas into little, and has applied to a relatively small 
building what would have been more suitable to a much 
larger structure. But, at the same time, the detail is 
so excellent, the parts so cleverly subordinated to the 
whole scheme, every point appears to have been so 
well thought out and adapted to the requirements of 
the church,^ that St. Bride's may properly take its place 
among Wren's most successful ecclesiastical works. ^ 

The east window, containing a stained-glass copy 
of Rubens's " Descent from the Cross," was executed 
by Mr. Muss in 1825. As has been well said : had 
Rembrandt treated the subject instead of Rubens, 
the darkness of much of this copy would have been 
appropriate ; as it is, it does not give a very accurate 
idea of the original work. 

Among those who have been buried in the church- 
yard or the church since the rebuilding, may be men- 
tioned John Ogilby, who, besides various poems and 
translations (of Horace in particular), wrote America : 
being the most accurate Description of the New World, 
in 1671, and who died in 1676 — he was thus buried 
here when no church stood on the spot ; Thomas 

^ Wren is even said to have chosen the brass alms-boxes, so that 
everything should be in character. 

2 As an example of Wren's attention to every detail, the following 
letter, hanging in the present eighteenth-century vestry of the church, 
and addressed to " Mr. Dove at his house in Salisbury Court," is 
interesting : — 

" Sir, — I send you the rates corrected upon Mr. Kinnaird's paper 
according to the best of my judgement, which will serve you to make a 
bargain upon, and I believe it may be performed for the money in 
good materialls and good worke. — Your faithfull servant, 

" Christopher Wren." 
234 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

Flatman, the poet and miniature painter, who, dying 
on Dec. 8, 1688, was laid to rest " near to the rails 
of the Communion Table " in the church where his 
eldest son had been buried earlier ; Francis Sand- 
ford, noted for his Genealogical History of the Kings of 
England and his Account of the Coronation of James II., 
who died in the Fleet in 1693 ; Sir Edward Lutwich, 
knight, 1709 ; the Countess of Orrery, who lies in 
the chancel, 1710 ; Dr. Charles Davenant, M.P. for 
St. Ives, and son of Sir Charles Davenant (whose 
widow was also buried here), who died in 1710 ; Eliza- 
beth Thom.as (who, under the name of ' Corinna,' is 
known to readers of Pope's private letters), who was 
buried in the ' Fleet Market Ground ' (given to the 
parish, in 1610, by Lord Dorset, as we have already 
seen) on Feb. 5, 1731, she being interred at the expense 
of Lady Delawar ; and Robert Lloyd, the friend of 
Charles Churchill,^ who died in the Fleet in 1764. 
Three years earlier (July 1761), there was laid to 
rest, under a flat stone, about the middle of the centre 
aisle, the man who is almost as much connected with 
this church and its neighbourhood as was Dr. Johnson 
with St. Clement's — Samuel Richardson, whose now 
well-nigh forgotten works once rivalled those of his 
so much greater contemporary, Fielding, and the 
names of whose novels, Grandison, Clarissa, Pamela, 
and the rest, roll glibly from the tongues of those 
who have never read a word written by their creator. 
There are also tablets here to the memory of James 
Molins, the surgeon, 1686 ; William Charles Wells, 
another doctor, a F.R.S. and author of the Essay 
on Dew, 1817 ; Alderman Waithman (who is com- 
memorated by the column at Ludgate Circus), 1833 ; 
the Rev. John Pridden, curate of the parish for twenty- 

^ London Past and Present. 

235 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

live years, 1825 ; to the wife and children of John 
Nichols, the historian of Leicestershire, 1776 ; to 
Isaac Romilly, F.R.S., 1759 ; and to Mrs. Dove, wife 
of the Rev. William Dove, once vicar of the parish. 

The last burial here took place in February 1849, 
after which date they were disallowed. 

The clergy connected with St. Bride's have numbered 
several notable men. There was, for instance, that 
John Cardmaker who was burnt at Smithfield for 
heresy in 1555 ; Thomas Fuller, the author of the 
Holy State and the Worthies of England, was once 
Lecturer here ; Dr. Isaac Madox, who began life as 
an apprentice to a pastry-cook, and finally became 
Bishop of Winchester, 1759, was a curate here ; 
while the vicars include Dr. John Thomas, who died 
Bishop of Rochester (one of the two John Thomases 
who reached this dignity, both of whom were, at the 
same time, chaplains to the King, were good preachers, 
and — squinted !), and Dr. John Blair, who was mathe- 
matical tutor to the Duke of York (1757), and wrote 
his Chronological History of the World three years 
earlier ; ^ while that Mr. Palmer who was complained 
of in 1637 for omitting the Prayer for the Bishops 
and rest of the Clergy, and who was accustomed to sleep 
in St. Bride's tower in order to save money for the 
poor (he died in 1659 — after being sequestrated in 
1642) should by no means be forgotten.^ 

1 Noble tells us that St. Bride's was long noted for its tithe rate 
contests. A long lawsuit in 1645 was followed by others, until, 
in 1705-6, a final settlement was arrived at. The details need not 
detain us ; but it appears that ' forgetting ' to pay was very 
frequent. Even so early as 1523, John Rooper of Eltham left " To 
the Vycar of Saincte Brydes in London, for any tithes forgotten, 
xs " — a kind of conscience money, which may or may not have 
represented the whole of the deceased's indebtedness to the church ! 

2 We learn that one Alexander Legh was presented to the living, 
in 1 47 1, by the Abbot and Convent of Westminster. 

236 



CHURCHES OF FLEET STREET 

No notice of St. Bride's would be quite complete 
without some reference being made to the bells, for 
which the church has long been noted. In 1710, 
Abraham Rudhall of Gloucester cast a set of ten 
for the church (two of them being recast in 1736), 
and on these (Jan. 11, 1717) the London Scholars rang 
the first complete peal of what is known as 5040 
' grandsire caters ' ever given. In the following year, 
two treble bells were added, and on Jan. 19, 1724, the 
first peal ever completed in England on twelve bells 
was rung ; while two years later, the first peal of 
Bob Maximum was given. 

It is said that people were wont to flock to St. Bride's 
from far and near to hear these bells when they were 
first placed here. A modern writer in Frasefs Magazine 
once put his affection for the bells of St. Bride's into 
a quatrain ; here it is : ^ — 

" Bells of St. Bride's, wheresoever I be, 
My heart in the night-time must travel to thee ; 
They may say it is Cockney, and what not besides. 
But I ne'er shall forget thee. Sweet Bells of St. Bride's." 

St. Bride's Churchyard, where Milton once lived for 
a short time at the house of one Russel, a tailor, is 
now entered by way of St. Bride's Avenue (a name 
hardly appropriate to such a relatively small passage). 
This opening, an enlargement of a former narrow way, 
was made owing to a fire which destroyed some of the 
houses between the church and the street on Nov. 14, 
1824. When the parishioners saw, for the first time, 
Wren's noble spire and tower from Fleet Street, they 
wisely took steps to keep the view open. Subscriptions 

1 Quoted by Noble, from whose pages I gather these details. The 
psalm tune ' St. Bride's ' was composed by Dr. Samuel Howard, who 
was organist here in 1780, 

237 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

were raised, meetings held, and finally, J. B. Papworth, 
the architect, was commissioned to design the im- 
provement, which was estimated to cost some £7000, 
although it seems to have amounted, in the end, to 
considerably more.^ 

^ I have reserved what there is to say about St. Bride's Avenue to 
the chapter deaUng with the streets south of Fleet Street. 



238 



CHAPTER VII 

THE TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES OF 
FLEET STREET 

Interesting and, in many cases, dating from 
early days as are the Strand taverns, those in Fleet 
Street are more interesting and of greater antiquity 
still. When they first came into existence in this 
part of London it is difficult to say, nor can we tell 
whether the edict of the Corporation against any sign 
over seven feet square hanging above the roadway, 
which was issued in 1388, refers to one or more in 
Fleet Street ; we do know, however, that early in the 
following century Sir William Sevenoaks (so named 
because he was a foundling of that village), Lord 
Mayor of London, owned a brew-house here which was 
called the ' Cowpe on the Hoope,' ^ and which may 
conceivably have carried on the recognised business 
of a tavern, selling retail, as well as making, beer. 

What is better established is that the vintners and 
their taverns, which were of mushroom-like growth in 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in this quarter, 
referred to by the writer of Hudibras Redivivus as 

". . . that tippling street, 
Distinguished by the name of Fleet," 

1 The hostel called ' Le Walssheman sur le Hoope, in Fletstrete,' 
mentioned by Riley {Memorials), was probably identical. 

239 



THE ANNAI.S OF FLEET STREET 

were for long a source of trouble and inconvenience 
to their more sober neighbours, and were, as Noble terms 
them, "a disorderly race." 

Thus he tells us that in 1558, in which year there 
were no fewer than twenty-six taverns in St. Dunstan's 
parish, 1 one was 'presented' "for mayntayning of 
a fforeigner to sell beer w*^ in his hous " ; another 
" for keepinge his tapstore vehementlie suspected of 
evill " ; that in 1562 no fewer than sixteen tavern- 
keepers were indicted for " holdying house and ty piers 
withn. the parishe for that they sell and utter their 
drinke by stone crewetts and potts nott seiled and 
wantnge measure " ; that in 1576 one William Powell 
was presented " for keepinge victuallinge without a 
licence in a sellar at Temple Barre, under the house 
of Symon Cannon, and for receivinge of idle persons 
into the same sellar to eate and drinke," a crime of 
which the Widow Paneley, who kept a tavern in 
Whitefriars, was also found guilty in 1581 ; and that 
in 1644 one John Beardwell, of Crown Court, Chancery 
Lane, was prosecuted under the following circum- 
stances : — 

" For his house standinge in the same court within 
ye Freedom of ye Citty, hath a backe dore out into 
Middlesex whereby to free himself from the charge 
of the Citty and yt he doth drawe drinke without 
lycense, and that he useth to travell to Oxforde and 
other of the kinge's quarters." 

Such attempts to cheat the Excise were not, by 
a long way, the worst crimes of which the Fleet 
Street tavern - holders were guilty in these days. 
Many of their premises were disorderly houses 
of the worst description, and we come across many 

1 Of these, two were brewers ; eight, ' tipplers ' ; three, innkeepers ; 
and thirteen, 'petty ostries.' 

240 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

being prosecuted on this score. Others were nuis- 
ances in various ways ; and not a few, the Jerusalem 
Ordinary being the most notorious, were hotbeds of 
Jesuitism.^ 

There is no doubt, too, that many of them were 
the constant scenes of those disturbances to which 
fermented hquor so frequently gives occasion. In- 
deed, one such broil is specifically mentioned in 1629, 
when the Lords of the Council wrote to the Lord 
Mayor requesting him " to shut up the taverns in 
Fleet Street from which the persons who caused the 
tumults there came ; and to commit the masters 
of such taverns to the houses of such citizens as he 
should think fit," ^ Three of the taverns concerned 
in this broil, are known to us by the following entries 
in the State Papers where a second letter, dated 
July 21, from the Lords of the Council contains this 
passage : "As there did not appear any crime against 
widow Sutton, keeper of the Mitre Tavern, and John 
Marshall, keeper of the King's Head Tavern, they 
might be let out on bail " ; while a third entry is in 
the form of an Order in Council, authorising the re- 
lease of John Clopton, vintner, at the Globe Tavern, 
on bail.^ 

1 In the Harleian MSS. (6850, fol. 3) is a document giving a view 
of all the taverns between St. James's and the City in the reign of 
James i. 

The following details gathered by Noble from the St. Dunstan's 
Registers, concerning the increase of Fleet Street taverns from 1558, 
when there were only twenty-six, are interesting. In 1600, there were 
twenty-nine ; in 1625, thirty-seven ; in 1631, fifty-eight ; in 1636, fifty- 
two, with seventeen victuallers in Whitefriars ; in 1650, seventy-four. 
A decrease then takes place, as in 1671 there are only sixty, and 
in 1700 thirty-seven. The coffee-houses were then springing into 
existence. 

■^ Domestic State Papers, July 15, 1629, and Remembrancia. 

' See also Remembrancia. 

Q 241 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Such affairs as these seem to have drawn attention 
to the Fleet Street hostehies, and some years later — ^to 
be precise, in 1633 — we find the Lord Mayor receiving 
an order from the Council to find out the number of 
such places of entertainment, with the result that 
eight are given as being in St. Bride's, Fleet Street ; 
one in St. Martin's Without, Ludgate ; and " Thomas 
Gilbert keepeth a tavern at the Bell Savage in Fleet 
Street," we are told, although this tavern was where 
Ludgate Hill (then called Fleet Street) now runs. 

Of the eight hostelries mentioned, the Devil Tavern, 
No. 1 Fleet Street, was one of the most famous and one 
of the oldest, its site being now occupied by the bank 
of Messrs. Child & Co.^ The ' Devil,' or ' St. Dunstan's,' 
as it was at first styled, which had, appropriatel}^ 
for its sign a representation of St. Dunstan pulling 
the Devil by the nose, is mentioned as even then being 
an old and well-known tavern, in the interlude called 
J ache Jugeler, dated 1563. Li this old play, Jack, in 
reply to Jenkin's inquiry as to where he and his master 
were to dwell, replies : — 

" At the Devyll yf you lust, I can not tell ! " 

The house was kept, in the time of James i., by one 
Simon Wadlow or Wadloe, whose name is mentioned in 
a line in the Staple of News, ^ by Ben Jonson one of the 
most frequent visitors here and the most famous, the pre- 
siding deity of the Apollo Club which held its meetings 
at the ' Devil.' Says Pennyboy Canter, in that play : — 

"... Dine in Apollo, with Pecunia, 
At brave Duke Wadloe's." 

1 It is mentioned in the earliest Directory, dated 1677. 

2 Act III. Scene i, is laid at the Devil Tavern, the 'Apollo,' in 
this play. Rowley, in Ms Match by Midnight, 1633, also mentions the 
' Devil.' 

242 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

Wadlow died in 1627, in which year an entry among 
the records of St. Dunstan's reads : " March 30, 1627. 
Symon Wadlowe, vintner, was buried out of Fleet 
Street." His widow appears to have carried on the 
business for nearly another three years, her name as a 
licensed victualler appearing, for the last time in the 
Wardmote Returns, on Dec. 21, 1629. John Wad- 
low's name is given in 1646, he being apparently the 
son of Simon, and it is last found in December 1660, 
he having moved eastwards and being known to have 
rebuilt the Sun Tavern, behind the Royal Exchange, 
after the Great Fire. He it was who issued a token 
showing St. Dunstan holding the Devil, on one side ; 
and thus following the example of his father, Simon, 
of whom a very rare token is recorded, having on the 
obverse " at the D and Dunstan's," with a representa- 
tion of St. Dunstan standing by his anvil and pulling 
the Devil's nose with his pincers, and on the reverse 
the words " within Temple barre " and the initials 
"I.S.W."! 

The history of the ' Devil ' has become merged in 
the almost greater fame of the Club whose apartment, ^ 
which seems to have been built away from the tavern, 
but formed an integral part of the property here, was 
termed the ' Oracle of Apollo.' Hardly is the ' Mer- 
maid ' better remembered than this celebrated gathering 
of the learned and witty of Elizabeth's and James's 
reigns. Timbs says that it is not known when Jonson 
first began to frequent the ' Devil,' but it was, at any 
rate, as early as 1616, for he himself tells us that he 

1 In " The Burning of the Rumps/' by Hogarth, a rump is shown 
being hung against the signboard of the ' Devil ' ; and Killigrew laid 
one of the scenes in his Parson's Wedding, at this tavern. 

2 Erected about 1624. See letter from Chamberlain to Carleton 
dated 19th June of that year, in Domestic State Papers. 

243 



THE ANNATES OF FLEET STREET 

wrote The Devil is an Asse, first produced in that year, 
when he "drank bad wine at the Devil." 

The room in which so many illustrious ones have 
from time to time assembled must have been on an 
upper floor, for, in some lines in Prior and Montague's 
Hind and Panther Transvers'd, we read : — 

" Hence to the Devil — 
Thus to the place where Jensen sat, we climb, 
Leaning on the same rail that guided him." 

Over the entrance to this room was placed a bust of 
Apollo, cleverly modelled from that of the Apollo 
Belvedere, and a black board, on which, in letters of 
gold, were inscribed the following lines of ' Welcome,' ^ 
which Ben Jonson wrote, and which were subscribed 
with the words, " O Rare Ben Jonson." They were 
placed above the door inside the room : — 

" Welcome all, who lead or follow, 
To the Oracle of Apollo — 
Here he speaks out of his pottle. 
Or the tripos, his Tower bottle \ 
All his answers are divine. 
Truth itself doth flow in wine. 
Hang up all the poor hep-drinkers, 
Cries old Sim, the king of skinkers, 
He that half of life abuses, 
That sits watering with the Muses. 
Those dull girls no good can mean us ; 
Wine it is the milk of Venus, 
And the Poet's horse accounted 
Ply it, and you all are mounted. 
'Tis the true Phoebeian liquor. 
Cheers the brain, makes wit the quicker, 
Pays all debts, cures all diseases. 
And at once tliree senses pleases. 
Welcome all, who lead or follow. 
To the Oracle of Apollo." 



1 Child's Bank possesses these memorials. 



244 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

Above the fireplace were exhibited the rules of the 
Club, said to have been cut in a marble slab, although 
more probably painted in gold on a black background 
similar to the 'Welcome.' These rules were written in 
Latin, "justly admired for its conciseness and elegance," 
says Burn. Indeed, Jonson's classic gifts seem to 
have been exhibited elsewhere in the tavern to which 
he so frequently resorted, for we are told that Latin 
inscriptions were to be found in other parts of the 
house, and so late as 1731 these words over the clock 
still remained in situ : "Si noeturnia tibi noceat po- 
tatio vini, hoc in mane bibes iterum, et fuerit medicina," 
a moral Jonson himself seems to have laid to heart, 
for it is known that, in order to be near his beloved 
Club, he lived " without Temple-barre, at a combe- 
maker's shop, about the Elephant and Castle," and at 
the ' Devil ' he seems to have held a kind of literary 
and sociable court, just as Dryden afterwards did at 
Button's, and, later still, Theodore Hook at the 
Athenaeum. 

The rules which Jonson wrote in Latin have 
disappeared, but we have Alexander Brome's English 
version, which shows that the earlier poet was 
well qualified to direct the modes and manners 
of "an assembly of good fellows." This is how they 
run : — 

" Let none but guests, or clubbers, hither come. 
Let dunces, fools, sad sordid men keep home. 
Let learned, civil, merry men b' invited. 
And modest too ; nor be choice ladies shghted. 
Let nothing in the treat offend the guest ; 
More for delight than cost prepare the feast. 
The cook and purvey'r must our palates know ; 
And none contend who shall sit high or low. 
Our waiters must quick-sighted be, and dumb. 
And let the drawers quickly hear and come. 

245 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Let not our wine be mix'd, but brisk and neat, 

Or else the drinkers may the vintners beat. 

And let our only emulation be, 

Not drinking much, but talking wittily. 

Let it be voted lawful to stir up 

Each other with a moderate chirping cup ; 

Let not our company be or talk too much ; 

On serious things, or sacred, let's not touch 

With sated heads and bellies. Neither may 

Fiddlers unask'd obtrude themselves to play. 

With laughing, leaping, dancing, jests, and songs, 

And whate'er else to grateful mirth belongs, 

Let's celebrate our feasts ; and let us see 

That all our jests without reflection be. 

Insipid poems let no man rehearse. 

Nor any be compelled to write a verse. 

All noise of vain disputes must be forborne. 

And let no lover in a corner mourn. 

To fight and brawl, like hectors, let none dare, 

Glasses or windows break, or hangings tear. 

Whoe'er shall publish what's here done or said 

From our society must be banished ; 

Let none by drinking do or suffer harm, 

And, while we stay, let us be always warm." ^ 

Jonson seems to have ruled at his club with some- 
thing of the dictatorial qualities of his great namesake 
(Johnson) at a later period. Here he held his court ; 
hither came those who, as his equals, wished for the 
' flow of soul,' or, as his inferiors, hoped to gain inspira- 
tion from the words of wit and wisdom which flowed 
from his lips. One of these, named Marmion, thus 
describes rare Ben holding his literary court : — 

"... I come from Apollo 

. . . From the heaven 
Of my delight, where the boon Delphic god 
Drinks sack, and keeps his bacchanalia. 
And has his incense and his altars smoking. 



^ Poems and Songs, by Alexander Brome, 1661. 



246 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

And speaks in sparkling prophecies ; thence I come, 
My brains perfumed with the rich Indian vapour. 
And heightened with conceits. ..." 

Another of the habitues was Randolph, the drama- 
tist, and an anecdote has survived connected with his 
first introduction to the Chib ; although his name, at 
least, seems to have been previously known to Jonson. 

Randolph was anxious to see the author of The Al- 
chemist and his companions in full saturnalia, and with 
this object betook himself to the Devil Tavern, and 
having mounted the stairs, peeped through the half- 
opened door into the room where the Club was holding 
its seance. At the moment he did so, Jonson's quick 
eye detected him : " John Bo-peep," he cried, " come 
in." Upon Randolph's entry, four of the members 
began to make impromptu rhymes on the shabbiness 
of his clothes, and finally asked him if he could not 
cap their verses ; whereupon he thus did so : — 

"I, John Bo-peep, to you four sheep — 
With each one his good fleece ; 
If you are \villing to give me five shilling, 
'Tis fifteen-pence a-piece." 

" By Jesus," exclaimed Jonson, " I believe this 
must be my son Randolph " ; and ever after ' my son ' 
was Jonson's affectionate title for the author of The 
Muses' Looking-Glass. 

Another anecdote shows that Jonson sometimes 
met his match even in his own territory. On one 
occasion, a countryman, having been introduced to 
the Club, was boasting about the extent of his landed 
possessions. Jonson listened for a time in patience, 
but at last could stand it no longer, and impatiently 
exclaimed, " What signifies to us your dirt and your 
clods ? Where you have an acre of land I have ten 

247 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

acres of wit." (Jonson never let his light shine under 
a bushel.) " Have you so," replied the countryman, 
" good Mr. Wise-acre ? " " Why, how now, Ben ? You 
seem to be quite stung," said one of his companions, 
seeing the great man obviously annoyed at the retort. 
" Why, yes," answered Jonson. " I was never so 
pricked by a hob-nail before." 

How long the ' Apollo ' existed at the ' Devil ' is 
unknown ; probably the death of Jonson put a stop 
to those jolly meetings coenaque Deorum, which 
under his wgis had such a notable existence. The 
' Apollo ' room, however, was for long used for various 
purposes of a literary kind. 

Although the Apollo Club forms the most notable 
association of the ' Devil,' the tavern had many other 
memories, and, at a later date, we know it to have 
been a favourite resort of Pepys, Steele, Addison, and 
Swift, the last of whom tells ' Stella,' on Oct. 12, 
1710, " I dined to-day with Dr. Garth and Mr. Addison 
at the Devil Tavern, and Garth treated." 

Goldsmith also frequented the place, not only as 
a tavern, but also as a spot where a card club to 
which he belonged was wont to meet ; while Johnson 
was often here, and it was at the * Devil ' that, in 
1751, he gave that famous supper in honour of 
Mrs. Charlotte Lenox and her first literary bant- 
ling, the Life of Harriet Stuart. Hawkins gives the 
following graphic and amusing account of the enter- 
tainment : — 

" The place appointed was the Devil Tavern ; and 
there, about the hour of eight, Mrs. Lenox and her 
husband, as also the Club ^ to the number of near 
twenty assembled. The supper was elegant, and 

1 The Ivy, Lane or King's Head Club, in Paternoster Row, one of 
Johnson's earlier clubs. 

248 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

Johnson had directed that a magnificent hot apple-pie 
should make a part of it ; and this he would have 
stuck with bay leaves, because, forsooth, Mrs. Lenox 
was an authoress. . . . About five (a.m.) Johnson's 
face shone with meridian splendour, though his 
drink had been only lemonade. The dawn of day 
began to put us in mind of our reckoning ; but the 
waiters were all so overcome with sleep that it was 
two hours before a bill could be had, and it was not 
until near eight that the creaking of the street door 
gave the signal for our departure." ^ 

The early reputation of the ' Devil ' for good 
cheer is exemplified in a ballad describing the 
visit of James i. to St. Paul's in 1620,^ one verse 
of which runs : — 

" The Maior layd downe his mace, and cry'd, 
' God save your Grace, 
And keepe our King from all evill ! ' 
With all my hart I then wist, the good mace 

had been in my fist, 
To ha' pawn'd it for supper at the Devill." 

We come across another reference to the house 
in the following century, for in the Taller for Oct. 11, 
1709, is an account of a wedding entertainment given 
here, in which reference is made to " the rules of Ben's 
Club in gold letters over the chimney," in "a place 
sacred to mirth, tempered with discretion," supposed to 
be the last mention of Jonson's famous lines which 
were subsequently removed, although actually when 
or by whom has never been discovered. 

It was in the Apollo Chamber, at the ' Devil,' 
that the Court-day Odes of the Poets Laureate were 

1 Life of Johnson. 

' A well-known print of this is extant. 

249 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

wont to be rehearsed to the accompaniment of music, 
a fact which inspired the hne in the Dunciad : — 

" Back to the Devil the loud echoes roll," 

and is also referred to in the following epigram : — 

" When Laureates make Odes, do you ask of what sort ? 
Do you ask if they're good, or are evil ? 
You may judge — from the Devil they come to the Court, 
And go from the Court to the Devil." 

But others besides wits and poets were accustomed 
to congregate here ; for instance, the Royal Society 
is known to have held one of its annual dinners here 
in 1746, and six years later concerts were given 
in the great room which had echoed to the voice of 
Jonson. In 1775, Brush Collins gave his satirical 
lectures on Modern Oratory ; and in the following 
year, a fraternity, known as the Pandemonium Club, 
held its first meeting here, on November 4, The 
members apparently lived up to the title of their club, 
for we are told that " these devils were lawyers, who 
were about commencing term, to the annoyance of many 
a hitherto happy bon-vwanV^ The place became, 
indeed, a great haunt of the students from the Temple, 
and they must have blessed the memory of the man 
who in the reign of Charles ii. left " ten pounds to 
be drunk by lawyers and physicians at the Devil 
Tavern, by Temple Bar." ^ 

In spite of the numbers of those who studied and 
administered the law here, one of the notable men 
who lived by breaking it was a constant habitue. This 
was no less a person than that John Cottington, alias 

^ These facts, to which Timbs was greatly indebted, are taken from 
Mr. Burn's valuable article on the ' Devil Tavern,' incorporated in 
his account of the Beaufoy Catalogue of Tokens. 
250 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

' Mull Sack,' who is stated to have indifferently sub- 
jected Oliver Cromwell and Charles ii. to his depre- 
dations. It seems more than likely that many of 
those who unwittingly found themselves in the company 
of this well-mannered, fashionably dressed stranger, 
left the ' Devil ' lighter in pocket than they entered it ! 

There is a good representation of the exterior of 
the Devil Tavern, exhibiting its picturesque gabled 
front, drawn by Wale. It showed a half-length figure 
of the saint with the Devil looking over his shoulder. 
When, in 1764, projecting signs were ordered to be 
removed, this interesting relic was placed fiat against 
the front of the house, and there remained, says Timbs, 
till the demolition of the building. This occurrence 
took place in 1787, when the tavern, having fallen 
on bad days, was purchased by Messrs. Child, for 
£2800, and Child's Place and the bank premises erected 
on its site soon after. 

In connection with the ' Devil ' should be mentioned 
a tavern set up in rivalry with it, a few doors farther 
east in Fleet Street (at No. 8), and called the ' Young 
Devil,' the entrance to which " was from a flight of 
steps leading down below ground from the adjoining 
narrow passage of entrance to Dick's Coffee-House." i 
It does not appear to have been a successful venture, 
for it lasted little over a year, 1708 to 1709, during 
which time, however, the Society of Antiquaries 
shifted their meeting-place hither from the Bear Tavern, 
in the Strand. 

Many years later another attempt was made to 
resuscitate the place, under the style of Will's 
CoFFEE-HousE, on the opposite side of the street. 
Here an ' Apollo ' music-room was instituted, in 
imitation of the Apollo room at the ' Devil ' ; and 

^ City Press, June 23, i860, quoted by T. C. Noble. 

251 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

an advertisement of a concert here, on Dec. 19, 1737, 
mentions that "tickets are to be had at Will's Coffee- 
House, formerly the Apollo, in Bell Yard, near Temple 
Bar." Probably the ' Apollo Court ' shown in Hor- 
wood's " Plan " of 1799 approximately marks the 
site of, and no doubt takes its name from, this coffee- 
house. 

Not far from the ' Devil ' was a once famous 
place of entertainment — namely, Dick's Coffee-House, 
earlier known as ' Richard's,' which occupied the site 
of No. 8 Fleet Street. R took its name from Richard 
Turner or Torner, who obtained a lease of the house 
in 1680. When Timbs was writing his book on Clubs, 
about 1870, Dick's was still in existence, and the 
writer tells us that it then retained its old panelling 
and original staircase. To-day, an optician's shop 
stands on its site. In 1737, the Rev. James Miller 
wrote and produced a play called The Cojfee-House, and 
as a frontispiece to the published edition, was shown 
the interior of ' Dick's ' then kept by a Mrs. Yarrow 
and her daughter. Now it so happened that certain 
characters in this play were supposed, rightly or wrongly, 
to have been taken from these two ladies who were 
reigning ' toasts ' among the younger members of 
the Temple ; and so infuriated were the latter at the 
liberty taken with the hostess and her daughter, 
that they succeeded not only in damning the play 
on the first night, but in like manner dealing with 
anything suspected to emanate from Miller's pen for 
many years after. 

Steele and Addison were both frequenters of 
' Dick's,' and so was Cowper, and here it was that the 
latter one day read something in the newspaper, which 
his excitable brain construed into a libel on him- 
self, with the result that he rushed out, determined 
252 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

on committing suicide — a project luckily not per- 
sisted in. 

In 1885, ' Dick's ' had become a French restaurant, 
and the back windows still looked out into Hare Court, 
Temple, as they had looked when the Spectator and 
Sir Roger de Coverley gazed through them. Together 
with No. 7, next door, the old house was demolished 
in 1899 ; and with it went not only the memory of 
this interesting coffee-house, but also a link with a 
still earlier day, for here, in the sixteenth century, 
Richard Tottill, law-printer to Edward vi., Mary, and 
Elizabeth, had his press, and No. 7 Fleet Street was 
in those days known by the sign of the ' Hand and 
Starre,' and formed Tottill's private residence attached 
to his printing establishment. Later, No. 7 was 
occupied by Jaggard and Joel Stephens, also law- 
printers in the days of the Georges ; while in our own 
day, Messrs. Butterworth, the law-printers, occupied 
it till 1899, as they had done for many years 
previously. The original lease of the premises dates 
from the time of Henry viii., so that for nearly four 
hundred years one set of premises had been un- 
interruptedly in the hands of those carrying on a 
similar business. 

Another well - remembered hostelry was the 
'Rainbow,' which stood on the site of No. 15 Fleet 
Street. It was the second coffee-house opened in 
London, the first having been in St. Michael's Alley, 
Cornhill, which only preceded the ' Rainbow ' by 
four years. We find a reference to the Fleet Street 
house among Aubrey's MSS.^ dated 1680, where we 
learn that " when coffee first came in, Sir Henry 
Blount was a great upholder of it, and hath ever since 
been a great frequenter of coffee-houses, especially 
^ In the Bodleian. It is quoted by Timbs.' 

253 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Mr. Farre's, at the Rainbowe, by Inner Temple 
Gate." 

Farr, or Farre, was a man of some importance 
and energy, and he seems to have combined the business 
of a barber with that of a coffee-house keeper, for 
in the inquest held at St. Dunstan's on Dec. 21, 1657, 
we find the following entry regarding him, and his 
coffee-house which appears to have been a nuisance 
to the neighbourhood when the fragrant berry was 
being distilled : — 

" We present James Farr, barber, for making and 
selling of a drink called coffee, whereby in making 
the same he annoyeth his neighbours by evil smells ; 
and for keeping of fire for the most part night and 
day, whereby his chimney and chamber hath been 
set on fire, to the great danger and affrightment of 
his neighbours." ^ Whatever was the result of this 
complaint, it was not successful in getting rid of Farr 
or his coffee-house, both of which flourished exceed- 
ingly ; although there seems to have been great and 
widespread opposition to the introduction of coffee, 
ranging from royal proclamations (one in 1660 orders 
a duty of fourpence on every gallon of coffee made 
and sold ; another, in 1675, ordered coffee-houses to 
be shut up, but this was because they were supposed 
to be hotbeds of sedition, and the law was abrogated 
almost immediately afterwards) to such complaints 
as the one I have quoted. Even in 1708, Hatton, in 
his New View of London, is found remarking : " Who 
would have thought London would ever have had 
three thousand such nuisances, and that coffee would 
have been (as now) so much drunk by the best of 
quality, and physicians ? " 

Addison and Steele were both accustomed to 

^ See Hatton's New View of London. 
254 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

drink coffee at the ' Rainbow ' ; and, indeed, at this 
period the place was a fashionable resort, where the 
latest scandal was talked and the latest fashions 
exhibited. A reference to the latter is made in No. 16 
of the Spectator, where we read : "I have received a 
letter desiring me to be very satirical upon the little 
muff that is now in fashion ; another informs me 
of a pair of silver garters buckled below the knee, 
that have lately been seen at the Rainbow Coffee- 
house in Fleet Street." How long Farr's tenancy of the 
house existed I am unable to say ; as we have seen, 
he was there in 1657, and he issued a token with a 
rainbow depicted on it in 1666. In 1780 the house was 
kept by Alexander Moncrieff, and preserved its old 
name. 

Timbs was informed by Moncrieff, the dramatic 
writer, a grandson of Alexander, of this fact, and 
we are also told that the coffee-room had a lofty bay- 
window at the south end, looking over the Temple 
precincts, in which bay was a table reserved for the 
elder and more important patrons of the house. Only 
a glass partition separated this room from the kitchen, 
so that visitors were able to see the preparation of 
the drink they came to enjoy. Apparently the en- 
trance was in Rainbow Court (called by Horwood, Rain 
Court, and by Strype, Rain Alley) and the front in 
Fleet Street, occupied by shops or offices ; for we know 
that Samuel Speed the bookseller had his premises 
' at the sign of the Rainbow,' as had Daniel! Pake- 
man, a law bookseller, in 1656 ; that at an earlier date 
(1636) Trussell's History of Englmid was " printed 
by M. D. for Ephraim Dawson and are to bee sold 
in Fleet Street, at the signe of the Rainbowe, neere 
the Inner Temple Gate " ; and that, in 1682, the Phoenix 
Fire Office was first established here, by Dr. Bare- 

255 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

bone. The house itself was continued as a tavern 
down to our own days,^ and, not inappropriately, 
the ' Bodega ' now occupies the site of its former 
activity. 

According to some authorities, it was two doors 
east from the ' Rainbow ' that another coffee-house, ^ 
called ' Nan do's,' existed. Later investigation, how- 
ever, seems to prove that ' Nando's ' (a contraction 
for Ferdinando's) was really a successor to the ' Rain- 
bow,' and occupied the same premises. The fact that 
a will of one John Jones of London and Hampton 
exists, bequeathing a fourth part of this property, in 
1692,^ to the Trustees of the Free School at Hampton, 
and specifically stating its whereabouts, leaves us 
in little doubt as to its identity with the ' Rainbow.' * 
Another reason for questioning its ever having been 
at No. 17 Fleet Street is the fact that that historic 
site was the one occupied by the office of the Duchy 
of Cornwall, and such a fact would hardly have been 
overlooked by topographers when mentioning the 
coffee-house, considering the beauty of the interior 
carving and plaster-work in this house. 

' Nando's ' was certainly in existence in 1707, 
for an advertisement of Bernard Lintot the book- 
seller for that year gives his address " at the Cross 
Keys and Cushion next Nando's Coffee-House, Temple 
Bar." Li the days of its prime, the house was kept 
by a Mrs. Humphries and her beautiful daughter, 
whose charms, says Cradock, in his Memoirs, were 
always admired " At the Bar and By the bar " ; al- 

1 It was rebuilt in i860, and reopened by Mr. John Argent. 

2 It will be remembered that Burke once lived at the ' Pope's 
Head,' the bookselling shop of Jacob Robinson at No. 16, the house 
next to the ' Rainbow ' and ' Nando's.' 

' It was conveyed in 1696. 

* See Mr. Philip Norman's London Vanished and Vanishing. 

256 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

though, this being so, it seems strange that Anstey, 
in his Pleader^s Guide, should speak of one who 

"... as many a greater man does, 
Eats, drinks, and falls asleep at Nando's." 

One of the ' greater men ' attracted hither by female 
charms and the potency of punch was Thurlow, 
then a briefless barrister, and it is said that his rise 
at the Bar dated from a certain occasion, when the 
historic cause of Douglas v. the Duke of Hamilton 
was being discussed, and it was suggested by some 
one who knew his man that Thurlow should be briefed 
as junior counsel ; which was accordingly done, with 
the result that the Duchess of Queensberry recom- 
mended the young man to Lord Bute, as an appropriate 
recipient of a silk gown. 

Another habitue was Shenstone, who lodged close 
by, between this house and ' George's ' in the Strand, 
and thus was able, as he writes in one of his letters, 
" to partake of the expensiveness of both." 

The next tavern I have to speak of has become 
notable because Tennyson has enshrined its name 
in his " Will Waterproof's Monologue " : — 

" Oh, Plump Head-waiter at the Cock, 
To which I most resort," 

he sings ; and in consequence the ' Cock ' is known 
to many to whom the names of other Fleet Street 
taverns are a dead letter. 

The ' Cock ' ^ is to-day situated at No. 22 Fleet 
Street, and a replica of its original carved sign, sup- 
posed to have been the work of Grinling Gibbon, and 
still preserved inside the house, as is one of the original 

^ The cock was really an old English word for a spigot or tap in a 
barrel, although usually indicated by the bird of that name. 

R 257 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Jacobean mantels, indicates to all and sundry the 
successor to the tavern where Pepys enjoyed himself 
' mightily,' and Tennyson sedately consumed ' his 
pint of port.' But the original ' Cock ' was situated 
on the other side of the street, and was taken down 
in 1887, when a branch of the Bank of England was 
erected on its site. The earlier tavern, or ' ale-house,' 
as it was termed, correctly known as the ' Cock and 
Bottle,' was thus one door eastward (No. 201 Fleet 
Street) of that Apollo Court at the corner of which 
Will's Coffee-House once stood, as we have seen. 

Timbs, writing of it about 1870, says : " It is, per- 
haps, the most primitive place of its kind in the metro- 
polis : it still possesses a fragment of decoration of the 
time of James i., and the writer remembers the tavern 
half a century ago, with considerably more of its ori- 
ginal panelling." 

When the Plague was raging, in 1665, the landlord, 
in common with most of those who could afford to 
do so, left London, on which occasion he caused the 
following notice to be issued :— 

" This is to certify that the master of the Cock 
and Bottle, commonly called the Cock ale-house, 
at Temple Bar, hath dismissed his servants, and 
shut up his house, for this long vacation, intending 
(God willing) to return at Michaelmas next ; so that 
all persons whatsoever who may have any accounts 
with the said master, or farthings belonging to the 
said house, are desired to repair thither before the 
8th of this instant, and they shall receive satisfaction." 

One of these farthings — or tokens — is still in exist- 
ence, and is dated 1655. 

After the Plague ^ and the Great Fire, the ' Cock ' 

^ In the Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinarie, 1604, is an allusion to 
the 'Cock.' 

258 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

again opened its doors, and we find Pepys resorting 
hither on various occasions, one of which he thus 
records, on April 22, 1668 : " Thence by water to the 
Temple, and then to the Cocke Alehouse, and drank, 
and eat a lobster, and sang and were mighty merry." 

Johnson was, of course, known at the ' Cock,' and 
in later days Thackeray was one of the many illus- 
trious ones who have visited the place. 

Before returning to the south side of Fleet Street, 
there are several taverns which it will be convenient 
to notice. Two of these were situated in Chancery 
Lane : the ' King's Head ' ^ and the ' Pope's Head.' 

The former was a place of great antiquity, standing 
at the south-west corner of Chancery Lane, and 
described as " an elegant mansion," in the reign of 
Edward vi. Its sign represented the head of Henry 
VIII. The tavern is supposed to have occupied the 
residence, or to have stood on its site, of that Sir John 
Oldcastle whom Shakespeare has perpetuated as Sir 
John Falstaff, and who was executed in St. Giles' 
Fields, in 1417, for conspiracy against the person of 
Henry v. 

Some early references to the ' King's Head ' and its 
proprietors are to be found in the St. Dunstan's 
Registers. Thus in 1585 John Kent was 'presented' 
for pouring forth, from an upper window here, bad 
wine upon the people's heads below ; and three years 
later a like fate befell one Henry Marshe, who lived 
next door, for an " oven in his house very dangerous, 
joynge to the Kinges Heade wch. hath heretofore 
dangered his neighbours by fyre and doth yet remayne 
dangerous." In 1619, we read of one Sepcoate Mulling- 
nay who, on April 12, had been " hanged ovr against the 
Kinge's Heade Taverne in Fleet Street," being buried. 

^ Tokens of this house are known. 

259 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

The tavern seems to have been rather a favourite 
resort of malcontents, and in 1629, the then proprietor, 
John Marshall, was indicted, and his house closed by- 
order, as being a suspected hotbed of treason.^ Again, 
in 1678, here met the Popish Plot conspirators, under 
the presidency of the notorious Lord Howard of Escrick ; 
and a few years later the Green Ribbon Club, largely 
responsible for the ceremony of ' Burning the Pope,' 
which obtained from 1680 to 1682, held their consulta- 
tions here. North, referring to this tavern and the 
doings of the Green Ribbon Club, remarks : " The house 
was double-balconied in front, as may yet be seen, 
for the clubsters issue forth, in fresco, with hats 
and no perruques, pipes in their mouths, merry faces, 
and diluted throats for vocal encouragement of the 
canaglia below, at bonfires, on unusual or usual oc- 
casions." 

The following reference to the place in Luttrell's 
Diary helps to sustain its reputation for unruliness : — 

" 1682, Jan. 13. At night some young gentlemen 
of the Temple went to the King's Head tavern in 
Chancery Lane, committing strange outrages there, 
breaking of windowes, etc., which the watch hearing of, 
came to disperse them ; but they sending for severall 
of the watermen with halberts that attend their comp- 
troller at the revells, were engaged in a desperate riott, 
in which one of the watchmen was run into the body 
with an halbert, and lies very ill ; but the watchmen 
secured one or two of the watermen." 

A rather earlier reference to the place is contained 
in a letter from George Robinson to Williamson, in 

^ See Remembfancia, where there are several letters from the Lords 
of the Council to the Lord Mayor concerning certain tumults which 
had occurred at the ' King's Head,' the ' Mitre,' and the ' Globe ' taverns 
in 1629. 

260 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

which the former states that he is dining with Sir Martin 
Noel at the ' King's Head ' on Jan. 9, 1667. 

The tavern itself, at least at one period, must have 
been, as so many were in the seventeenth century, 
upstairs, for Richard Harriot, the publisher of Izaak 
Walton's Works, kept shop in 1665 " under the King's 
Head." 

The ' Pope's Head ' ^ is known to have been one of 
Pepys's many tavern resorts, but little else is, I believe, 
recorded of it. Better remembered is Peele's Coffee- 
house, which stood on the site of Nos. 177-78 Fleet 
Street, at the east corner of Fetter Lane. The days 
of Peele's glory were those of the later eighteenth 
century, and Dr. Johnson was one of its frequenters ; 
indeed, Timbs affirms that a portrait of the great ' Cham 
of Literature,' said to have been painted by Reynolds, 
once occupied a conspiciious place in the coffee-room. 
After having had a prosperous career as a coffee-house, 
the place became a tavern ; but all traces of its existence, 
in either character, have long since disappeared. During 
its palmy days, the house was notable for the number 
of daily papers it took in, which caused it to be much 
patronised by those anxious to learn the latest news. 
It is said that files of the Gazette (1759), the Times 
(1780), the Morning Chronicle (1773), the Morning Post 
(1773), the Morning Herald (1784), and the Morning 
Advertiser were kept here, all dating from the years 
(given here) when their publication began. ^ 

Shire Lane, running slightly west of Chancery 
Lane, from the main thoroughfare to Carey Street, 
and later known as Serle's Place, also had several 

^ There was a more famous Pope's Head Tavern in the alley of 
that name off Cornhill. 

' Later, it was appropriately here that the chief committee room of 
the Society for Repealing the Paper Duty was situated, in i86i. 

261 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

taverns within its precincts. The 'Trumpet ' was one of 
these, and was one of the more interesting of the taverns 
in the district here dealt with. The premises were 
situated on the left hand of the street, about midway 
up it, going from Fleet Street, and there was also an 
approach to it from the Strand, at the back of Ship 
Yard. The house was distinguished by a column on each 
side of the doorway, and under one of the first-floor 
windows hung a small sign of a trumpet. It is sup- 
posed by Diprose to have been one of the oldest 
licensed houses in London ; which would date it from 
about the end of James i.'s reign. It is referred to by 
Andrew Mar veil, who speaks of one sounding " another 
trumpet than that in Sheer Lane." 

Diprose gives the following interesting description 
of it as it was about the year 1868, at which time it was 
demolished in connection with the building of the New 
Law Courts : — 

" In appearance, the ' Trumpet ' was unpretentious, 
substantially built of red brick. In front, the first 
and second floors had each a row of four equal and well- 
sized windows, with thick, heavy oak sashes, and the 
third or attic floor was lighted by two dormer windows 
within and rising above the parapet. With the excep- 
tion of the ground floor, or shop front, but little altera- 
tion had ever evidently been made. There is a curious 
old woodcut of the house extant . . . which shows 
the sign of the trumpet above the facia line and below 
and between the window-sills of the first floor ; higher 
up in the centre of the pier between the windows is the 
figure of Bacchus astride a barrel, and to the next 
pier between the windows southward is fixed the lamp- 
iron and inverted bell-shaped lamp of the fashion 
anterior to the discovery of gas. The ground floor 
shows the door to have been at the end adjoining the 
262 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

south party-wall, and three windows in unison with 
those above, but supplied outside with flap shutters 
with pierced holes. The cellar flap is shown, but is 
in a different place to the one now existing : the truth 
of the print is borne out, however, by very patent 
evidence, which shows it to have been bricked up and 
a wider and larger one made in another place ; the 
arches of the three windows are covered by the modern 
facia board." 

The appearance of the house was rather that of a 
private residence than a tavern, and it seems probable 
that it was such before being converted to its later 
uses. 

It is proved to have formed the line of demarca- 
tion between Serle's Place and Lower Serle's Place, a 
boundary which had been lost sight of, for we are told 
that the last proprietor of the tavern, who took great 
interest in its features, not only restored the signboard, 
a modelled trumpet which had been removed, but 
also had the various coats of paint which covered the 
front removed in 1845, when the name of Serle's Place, 
and not, as had hitherto been supposed. Lower Serle's 
Place, was found upon it. 

An advertisement in the Daily Advertiser for July 2, 
1742, draws attention to the fact that a Mr. Jones, 
a musician of the period enjoying some repute, had 
removed hither from ' Widow Evans's,' and was ready 
to give entertainments on the harp or violin, at five 
o'clock every evening, as it appears he was accus- 
tomed to do at the ' Hercules' Pillars ' in Fleet Street. 

The chief fame of the ' Trumpet,' which had once 
been known as the ' Cat and Fiddle,' and still later 
as the ' Duke of York's,' lies, however, in the fact that 
two famous clubs, one largely imaginary, the other very 
real, held their meetings here. The former of these 

263 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

was the Tatler's Club, of which Isaac Bickerstaff was 
the chief protagonist, and of whose symposia Steele 
has told us in No. 132 of his immortal paper. Here 
it was that the deputation of ' Twaddlers ' assembled 
preparatory to setting out for Dick's Coffee-House 
in the Strand ; and after much trouble over the debat- 
able question of precedence — a question quickly put an 
end to by an alarm of fire — they " marched down Sheer 
Lane." Says Steele : " When we came to Temple Bar, 
Sir Harry and Sir Giles got over, but a run of coaches 
kept the rest of us on this side of the street ; however, 
we all at last landed, and drew up in very good order 
before Ben Tooke's shop, who favoured our rallying 
with great humanity ; from whence we proceeded 
again until we came to Dick's Coffee-house, where I 
designed to carry them," etc. 

The other club which has conferred fame on the 
' Trumpet,' or the ' Cat and Fiddle,' was the noted 
' Kit-Kat.' 

The ' Trumpet ' was the scene of the Club's meet- 
ings, and here forgathered some of the greatest men and 
many of the finest intellects of the time. When Shire 
Lane was still in existence, a writer (in the National 
Review) well expressed the antithesis between this 
mean street and the noble and splendid figures which 
once haunted its precincts : " It is hard to believe," 
he says, " as we pick our way along the narrow and 
filthy pathway of Shire Lane, that in this blind alley, 
some hundred and fifty years ago, used to meet many 
of the finest gentlemen and choicest wits of the days 
of Queen Anne and the First George. Inside one of 
those frowsy and low-ceiled rooms . . . Halifax has 
conversed and Somers unbent, Addison mellowed 
over a bottle, Congreve flashed his wit, Vanbrugh 
let loose his easy humour. Garth talked and rhymed." 
264 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

In addition to such notable men all the great Whigs 
of the period seem to have been members of the 
' Kit-Kat,' and there such men as the Dukes of Somer- 
set, Grafton, Devonshire, Kingston, Marlborough, 
Richmond, and Newcastle, Lords Dorset, Sunderland, 
Manchester, and Wharton, and Sir Robert Walpole 
inter multis aliis, might have been met with conversing 
on matters of state, or questions of literature and the 
fine arts, or drinking to those ' toasts ' one of which 
was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, hastily sent for 
by her father, the Duke of Kingston, from her nur- 
sery, and hailed with acclaim by the brilliant throng 
that surrounded her, as the most beautiful girl of her 
day. 

During the eighteenth century literature and 
politics went hand in hand to a greater extent than 
they have ever done before or since. The statesman 
hardly considered that he had fulfilled his destiny 
unless he could entwine some bay leaves among his 
laurels ; the writer knew that his easiest and surest 
road to success was gained by hacking for one or the 
other party that wished to direct the destinies of the 
nation. The result was often an amorphous body 
of men whom to call merely political would have been 
to rob of their literary merit, and to designate solely 
as writers would have been to do too little honour 
to their political status. When those having such 
a twofold claim to notice became identified with a 
club, a difficulty at once arose as to whether that 
club should be regarded as a literary or political 
one. Such a difficulty might seem to face us with 
regard to the Kit-Kat Club : that it was political, 
its well-known Whig sentiments, and the names of the 
majority of its members, would be alone sufficient 
to prove ; but, on the other hand, so many men, 

265 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

who, if politicians — and we know they were this, for 
did not Horace Walpole once state that " The Kit-Kat 
Club, generally mentioned as a set of wits, were, in 
reality, the Patriots that saved Britain " ? — were still 
more great writers and wits, belonged to it ; many 
of its customs, particularly that of writing verses 
and epigrams for its toasting glasses, were so closely 
identified with literature rather than with politics, 
that, on the whole, I think it should take its place 
among literary clubs — especially, too, as it has some 
claims to be considered artistic (each member was 
supposed to have his portrait painted and presented 
to the Club) ; and while we can easily associate art 
with literature, neither gods nor men have ever at- 
tempted to assert that it has any conjunction with 
politics. 

The title, if not the origin, of the Kit-Kat Club 
is somewhat obscure. The generally accepted version 
is that it originally forgathered in a small house in 
Shire Lane, close to Temple Bar, then occupied by 
one Christopher Katt, who made and sold there mutton- 
pies (the conjunction of such a name with such com- 
estibles is significant), and thus Kit (Christopher) 
Katt became, by an easy transition, the name of the 
Club itself. On the other hand, the fact that the pie 
itself was known as a ' Kit-Kat ' (after the name of its 
maker) is sometimes regarded (it was so by Addison in 
the Spectator ^) as the origin of the name of the Club. 

It would seem that the last years of the seven- 
teenth century saw the founding of the Kit-Kat Club, 
and if, as has been assumed, ^ the so-called ' Order of 
the Toast ' is identical with it, then we can date its 
formation anterior to 1699, in which year Elkanah Settle 

^ No. 9, for March lo, 1711. See, too, the line : " A Kit-Kat is a 
supper for a lord." ^ By Malone, 

266 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES] 

wrote a poem " To the most renowned the President 
and the rest of the Knights of the most Noble Order 
of the Toast." 

There seems every reason to regard the ' Order 
of the Toast ' as identical with the Kit-Kat Club, 
for one of the famous characteristics of the latter was 
its toasting-glasses, used for drinking the healths of 
the reigning beauties of the day, on which were 
engraved verses in encomium of the charms of the 
fair ones. 

It was this habit of ' toasting ' that led Dr. 
Arbuthnot to produce the following epigram, which 
is also interesting as indicating another suggested 
origin of the Club : — 

" Whence deathless Kit-Kat took his name, 
Few critics can unriddle : 
Some say from pastrycook it came, 
And some from Cat and Fiddle. 

From no trim beaus its name it boasts, 

Grey statesmen or green wits. 
But from the pell-mell pack of toasts 

Of old Cats and young Kits." 

The reference, in the first verse, to the ' Cat and 
Fiddle ' is in allusion to Ned Ward's contention that 
the maker of the pies ('Kit-Kats') was named Chris- 
topher and lived at the sign of the ' Cat and Fiddle ' 
in Gray's Inn Lane, afterwards setting up as a pieman 
near the Fountain Tavern, in the Strand : whence the 
name of Kit (a fiddle) and Kat. Ward further affirms 
that the man Christopher was in the habit of inviting 
budding authors to feed, gratis, at his establishment, 
through the instrumentality of his friend, Jacob Tonson, 
the well-known bookseller, from which meetings the 
Kit-Kat Club had its origin. But Ward often wrote 

267 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

' sarcastic,' and I think the earlier origin the more hkely 
one, especially as it is more or less confirmed by Spence, 
who adds, however, that Tonson was secretary of the 
Club. Indeed, Tonson's later close connection with it 
is well known, when, as owner of the house at Barn 
Elms, he built a room expressly to receive the famous 
portraits painted of its members, which, from their 
size (36 in. by 28 in.), have given a specific name to 
a certain class of pictures. 

The Club seems from the first to have been patron- 
ised by the wits and fine gentlemen of the day, and 
besides such notable men as I have already mentioned, 
its list comprised such famous names as those of 
Addison, Congreve, Garth, Steele, and Vanbrugh ; 
while Sir Godfrey Kneller was its 'painter,' and pro- 
duced that remarkable series of portraits whose fame 
has outlived that of the Club itself. Two other members, 
of notoriety rather than note, were the redoubtable 
Lord Mohun and the Earl of Berkeley ; and Spence 
records that " the day they were entered of it, Jacob 
[Tonson] said he saw they were just going to be ruined. 
When Lord Mohun broke down the gilded emblem 
on the top of his chair, Jacob complained to his friends, 
and said a man who would do that would cut a man's 
throat " — a remark which must have been called to 
mind by many when Mohun and the Duke of Hamilton 
fought their sanguinary duel in Hyde Park. 

The Club was one of those which met for social 
converse, in which curriculum literature and politics, 
the last bit of scandal or the reigning beauty, were 
indifferently canvassed and discussed. Nor did it 
confine itself to spoken words, as its engraved toasts 
testify ; while its practical encouragement of literature 
found expression in a subscription, which was opened 
in 1709, of four hundred guineas for the best comedies, 
268 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

the list of names and subscriptions being drawn up 
by Lord Halifax in his own hand. 

From among the many symposia held at the 
Kit-Kat Club, in which the eloquence of Addison, 
the wit of Steele and Garth, the conversa- 
tional powers of Maynwaring (whose name is now 
wholly forgotten), the wisdom of Walpole and 
Pulteney, the humour of Congreve and Vanbrugh, 
and the less amiable qualities of Lord Mohun and 
Lord Berkeley, must have often played their part, 
two scenes at least have been recorded : the one 
when Garth, having repeatedly declared that he 
must be leaving, in order to attend his patients, was 
seduced into staying late by the excellence of some 
old wine, and when Steele reminded him of those 
awaiting his ministrations, pulled out his list of fifteen 
invalids and exclaimed, " 'Tis no great matter whether 
I see them to-night or not, for nine of them have 
such bad constitutions that all the physicians in the 
world can't save them ; and the other six have such 
good ones that all the physicians in the world can't 
kill them " ; and the other, when, after an evening 
spent in great hilarity, the occasion being a Whig 
celebration of the anniversary of King William's 
accession, Steele, who had drunk not wisely but too 
well, insisted on his chairmen carrying him to Bishop 
Hoadley's lodgings and knocking up the right reverend 
prelate who, as a member of the Club, had been present 
earlier in the evening at its meeting. Having done 
this, they got safely home with Sir Richard who, 
the next morning, remembering what had happened, 
sent the Bishop the graceful lines, which might have 
surely atoned for a far worse delinquency : — 

" Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, 
All faults he pardons, though he none commits." 

269 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

It was on the same occasion that John Sly, the hatter, 
insisted on drinking the immortal memory of King 
William on his knees, entering the club-room in this 
uneasy posture ; when Steele, turning to Hoadley, 
remarked sotto voce, " Do laugh ; 'tis but humanity 
to laugh," 

The ' toasts ' of the Kit-Kat Club have become 
famous. They were drunk to the honour of some 
reigning beauty, or some lady to whom the Club wished 
to do particular honour, and we can imagine with 
what satisfaction the latest belle learnt that she had 
been the subject of such a compliment. We know 
by name some of those who were toasted : Lady 
Godolphin, Lady Sunderland, Lady Bridgewater, and 
Lady Monthermer — all daughters, and beautiful ones, 
of the Duke of Marlborough ; the Duchess of Bolton, 
the Duchess of Beaufort, the Duchess of St. Albans ; 
Mrs. Long and Mrs. Barton, friends of Dean Swift ; 
Mrs. Brudenell and Lady Wharton, Lady Carlisle 
and Mrs. Kirk and Mademoiselle Spanheim, among 
them. 

Some of the inscriptions engraved on the glasses 
were composed by Garth, others by Lord Halifax, 
of whose contributions the following, written in 
honour of the Duchess of Beaufort in 1703 is one 
of the most successful : — 

" Offspring of a tuneful sire, 
Blest with more than mortal fire ; 
Likeness of a mother's face, 
Blest with more than mortal grace : 
You with double charms surprise. 
With his wit and with her eyes." 

The series of pictures with which the fame of the 
Club is coupled were painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, 
at the instance of Jacob Tonson, the secretary, who, as 
270 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

I have said, caused a room to be built for their reception 
at Barn Elms. At first they were half-lengths, but the 
apartment in which they were destined to hang being 
found too small for so many of such large dimensions, 
the smaller size was substituted, and the expression 
a ' Kit-Kat,' as applied to pictures, thus came into 
being. In 1821, a volume was published entitled 
Memoirs of the Celebrated Persons comprising the 
Kit-Cat (sic) Club ; it v/as illustrated by forty-eight 
portraits engraved by Cooper, in stipple, after the 
original pictures. The actual works, after the death 
of Jacob Tonson, descended to Richard Tonson, who, 
at his residence at Water-Oakley, on the Thames, 
added a room for their reception. He bequeathed 
them to Mr. Baker of Bayfordbury, a kinsman of 
the Tonson family, and Timbs mentions their being 
exhibited in the Art Treasures Exhibition at Man- 
chester in 1862. 

Several other Fleet Street hostelries were situated 
in Shire Lane, and among them was the ' Griffin,' 
which is notable as having been the tavern whence 
Sir John Denham, then a student in Lincoln's Inn, 
and some boon companions set out in a drunken 
frolic one night in the year 1635, and having obtained 
pots of ink and brushes, solemnly proceeded to blot 
out all the signs between Temple Bar and Charing 
Cross — an escapade for which they were duly mulcted 
by the law which was apparently casual enough to 
allow of their carrying into effect their practical 
joke. 

Another tavern in the same thoroughfare was the 
' Bible,' situated at what was later No. 13 in this 
street. It was a house of call for printers, and Diprose 
thinks that it was probably so called " in consideration 
of the typographic art, without reference to the sanctity 

271 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

of the holy volume," As it is known to have also 
been one of the notorious Jack Sheppard's haunts, 
one hopes his surmise was correct. There was a trap 
door in one of the rooms, and this was traditionally 
associated with the thief, he being said to have used 
it for purposes of escape from his pursuers, and to 
have gained Bell Yard by a subterranean passage 
connected with it. 

During the eighteenth century Shire Lane was, as we 
know, a haunt of the worst characters, and at a tavern 
here, known as the ' Angel and Crown,' a Mr. 
Quarrington was robbed and murdered by Thomas 
Carr and Elizabeth Adams, who were duly appre- 
hended, and hanged at Tyburn on Jan. 18, 1738. 

Another inn in the same thoroughfare was the 
' Sun,' subsequently used as the premises for the 
' Temple Bar Stores ' ; while the name of yet another, 
the ' Antigallican,' sufficiently indicates the period 
of its establishment. This house was a favourite 
resort of the notorious Lord Barrymore, whose sobri- 
quet was ' Hell gate,' and who was wont to come 
here to ' assist,' in both the English and French 
acceptations of that term, in prize-fights and other 
amusements of a more brutal nature. 

Close by, in Old Boswell Court, was the ' Black 
Horse,' where entertainments, such as had a vogue 
before the advent of music-halls, were given. In the 
thirties of the nineteenth century it had a great reputa- 
tion for such things, and is said to have been the best- 
frequented and most jovial of its kind in London, 
being the concert room, par excellence, of the period. 

Those days are as much forgotten as is Nineveh, 
they arenas dead as Pharaoh, so that such names as 
Dowson, Harry Perry, Bruton, Toplis, Mrs. Paul and 
Miss James, all of whom used to add to the gaiety of 
272 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

our forefathers in this haunt, mean nothing to us 
who with difliculty now associate any significance with 
that of Paul Bedford, or even with that of Toole as 
a comic entertainer other than an actor. 

There was a room in the basement of the ' Black 
Horse ' called the ' Patter-fee Lumber ' in flash 
slang, and here were wont to consort many of the 
worst characters of this disreputable neighbourhood. 
They held a sort of club here, membership of which 
enabled a thief or pickpocket to obtain means of 
feeing counsel in his defence when, as was frequently 
the case, necessary. 

Returning to the south side of Fleet Street, we come 
to a once notable tavern, ' The Mitre,' which occupied 
the site of Messrs. Hoare's Bank, No. 39. There was 
another ' Mitre ' farther east, in Mitre Court, about 
which I shall have something to say later on. The 
latter tavern has generally been regarded as the scene 
of so many of Johnson's oracular utterances, but the 
later investigations of Mr. Hutton seem to point to 
the fact that it was at the house at No. 39 Fleet Street 
that Johnson and his circle met. This tavern was one of 
great antiquity — dating, indeed, from the days of Shake- 
speare ; and the poet is even said to have frequented 
it and to have written here " From the rich Lavinian 
Shore," which is asserted to be " Shakespeare's Rime 
made by him at the Mytre in Fleete Street." ^ Ben 
Jonson refers to the house, in his Every Man out of Ms 
Humour,'^ where Puntarvolo says, " Carlo shall bespeak 
supper at the Mitre against we come back ; where 
we will meet, and dimple our cheeks with laughter." 

1 London Past and Present. From a volume by Richard Jackson, 
once belonging to Thorpe, the bookseller. 

^ Act vi. scene 6. Scenes 4 and 6 in Act v. of this play are laid at 
" a Room at the Mitre." 

S 273 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Another reference to the place occurs in a comedy 
piibhshed in 1611 and entitled Ram Alley, or Merrie 

Tricks : — 

" Meet me straight 

At the Mitre door in Fleet Street." 

Ram Alley/ which gives its name to this play, was 
close by, and we have a mention of it, as well as of the 
' Mitre,' in the Autobiography of Lilly the astrologer, 
who says : "In the year 1640, I met Dr. Percivall 
Willoughby of Derby ; we were of old acquaintance, 
and he but by great chance lately come to town ; we 
went to the Mitre Tavern in Fleet Street, where I sent 
for old Will Poole the astrologer, living then in Ram 
Alley," One Matthew Alsop is mentioned, in the 
Domestic State Papers, as being the keeper of the ' Mitre ' 
in 1639,2 2^,i\dL another seventeenth-century reference 
to the place is found in the pages of Pepys's Diary, 
where, under date of Jan. 20, 1660, we read : "At the 
Mitre in Fleet Street, in our way calling on Mr. Fage, 
who told me how the City have some hopes of Monk." 

Although during the Great Fire the ' Mitre ' was 
not actually destroyed, yet it suffered to some extent ; 
and we are told that it was " very much demolished 
and decaied in severall parts, and the Balcony was on 
fire, and was pulled downe," during the conflagration. 

Notwithstanding the ' Mitre's ' antiquity, and even 
the not improbable presence of Shakespeare and Ben 
Jonson here, it is, as is the case with all the taverns and 
coffee-houses frequented by him, the memory of Dr. 

1 It is called Ram Court by Horwood in 1799, but was known 
previously as Ram Alley. See Strype. 

^ There is extant a token of this house when it was kept by William 
Paget. An earlier mention of the place is to be found in the St. 
Dunstan's Register for 1613 : " William Hewitt from the ' Miter,' 
was buryed," and in 161 4 John Hewitt and another were prosecuted 
for using false measure. 

274 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

Johnson that first springs to the mind when we name it. 
It was the place he chiefly liked to sup in, surrounded 
by that wonderful society whose figures live again in 
Macaulay's famous description. The pages of Boswell 
contain many allusions to the ' Mitre ' : here the tour 
to the Hebrides was decided upon ; here Goldsmith 
was brought by Johnson ; here the Doctor told Ogilvie 
that " the noblest prospect a Scotchman ever sees 
is the high road that leads to England " ; here Johnson 
entertained the two young ladies from Staffordshire 
who had come to London to consult him on the subject 
of Methodism ; and it was of this house that Boswell 
once remarked : " We had a good supper, and port 
wine, of which he [Johnson] sometimes drank a bottle. 
The orthodox high-church sound of the Mitre — ^the 
figure and manner of the celebrated Samuel Johnson 
— the extraordinary power and precision of his conversa- 
tion, and the pride arising from finding myself admitted 
as his companion, produced a variety of sensations, and 
a pleasing elevation of mind, beyond what I had ever 
experienced." 

One of the latest of those who frequented the house 
in Johnson's train — Goldsmith, Percy, Burke, Hawkes- 
worth, Langton, Beauclerk, and the rest — linked their 
memory with a later age, for Chamberlain Clarke, who 
made one of them on many a notable occasion, died 
at a great age so comparatively late as 1831. Another 
notable habitue was Lord Stowell ; and it was at the 
' Mitre ' that the Society of Antiquaries sometimes 
held their meetings. Referring to another symposium 
here, Dr. Macmichael makes Dr. Radcliffe remark, 
in The Gold-Headed Cane, " I never recollect to have 
spent a more delightful evening than that at the Mitre 
Tavern in Fleet Street, where my good friend Billy 
Nutly . . . had been prevailed upon to accept of a small 

275 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

temporary assistance, and joined our party, the Earl 
of Denbigh, Lords Colepeper and Stowell, and Mr. 
Blackmore." ^ The Royal Society, at least on one 
occasion, in 1772, held their annual dinner here, before 
deserting the place for the ' Crown and Anchor.' 

The house seems to have been given up as a tavern 
about 1788, for in that year we know that Macklin 
opened it as the ' Poets' Gallery.' Later it became 
Saunders's Auction Rooms, and last of all it was pur- 
chased by Messrs. Hoare, who demolished the old 
building and erected their well-known bank on its site 
in 1829. 

It was, I imagine, not here, but at the ' Mitre ' 
IN Mitre Court, that Hogarth gave a dinner to his 
friend King, whom he desired to come and Era Bera 
Tlie ; for Hogarth is connected with this house in 
another way. He painted, as we have seen, a portrait 
of the notorious Sarah Malcolm ; a,nd when that for- 
midable lady was condemned to death for murder, 
her execution took place opposite Mitre Court, on 
March 7, 1733. We are told in Nichols' Anecdotes 
of Hogarth that on this occasion the crowd was so 
dense that " a Mrs. Strangways, who lived in Fleet 
Street, near Serjeants' Lin, crossed the street from 
her own house to Mrs. Colthurst's . . . over the 
heads and shoulders of the mob." ^ 

The ' Mitre ' in Mitre Court had been earlier known 
as Joe's Coffee-House,^ and the later title was taken 
on the old house in Fleet Street being given up as a 
tavern. It existed till 1865, in which year it was altered 

1 Note in Akerman's Tokens. 

2 1783 edition, p. 172, note. 

^ There was also a Harry's Coffee-House, in Fleet Street, kept by a 
Mr. Davies who is recorded, in 1740, as dying at the age of no ; as well 
as a Jerusalem Coffee-House. 

276 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

and added, to. So determined were its proprietors to 
connect Dr. Johnson with it, that his ' corner ' was 
preserved with due reverence, and a copy of Nollekens' 
well-known bust of the Doctor given an honoured place. 
It is, of course, quite possible that he did frequent 
Joe's Coffee-House, and therefore these relics de- 
served to be duly honoured here ; but it seems fairly 
well established that, when we read of him visiting 
the ' Mitre,' the ' Mitre ' at 39 Fleet Street, and not 
the ' Mitre ' farther east, is indicated. 

One of the numerous ' Hjercules' Pillars ' which 
were to be found in London in the eighteenth century, 
was situated close by the Fleet Street ' Mitre.' It 
stood on the same side of the thoroughfare, on the 
site of No. 27 Fleet Street, nearly opposite St. Dun- 
stan's Church, and was situated in Hercules' Pillars 
Alley, between Mitre Court and Falcon Court, which 
alley is described by Strype as " altogether inhabited 
by such as keep Publick Houses for entertainment, 
for which it is of note." It was a house of some pre- 
tensions, dating from the time of James i., and, like 
many others, issued its token (a halfpenny) at a time 
when one Edward Oldham kept it. The coin bears 
his name upon it, and a crowned standing figure 
grasping a pillar in each hand illustrates the sign 
of the tavern.^ 

The place was a favourite resort of Pepys, who 
has several references to it in his Diary, as thus : On 
Oct. 11, 1660 : " With Mr. Creed to Hercules' Pillars, 
where we drank." Again : "In Fleet-street I met with 
Mr. Salisbury, who is now grown in less than two years' 
time so great a limner that he has become excellent 
and gets a great deal of money at it. I took him to 
Hercules' Pillars to drink." 

1 It is given by both Burn and Akerman, 

277 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Then, on Feb. 6, 1668, he carried his wife, Betty 
Turner, Mercer, and Deb " to Hercules' Pillars, and 
there did give them a kind of a supper of about 7s. 
and very merry." 

On Feb. 22, 1669 : " After the play was done we 
met with Mr. Bateller and W. Hewer, and Talbot 
Pepys, and they followed us in a hackney-coach ; 
and we all supped at Hercules' Pillars ; and there I 
did give the best supper I could, and pretty merry ; 
and so home between eleven and twelve at night ; " 
and again, on April 30, 1669, the Diarist tells us that 
" at noon my wife came to me at my tailor's and I 
sent her home, and myself and Tom dined at Hercules' 
Pillars ; " while later in the same year (Aug. 30), we 
find him dining here alone, " while he sent his shoe 
to have the heel fastened at Wotton's." 

A more solemn personage than Pepys was also 
not unmindful of certain satisfying beverages to 
be had at this tavern, for Locke, according to Lord 
King's Life ^ of the philosopher, in advising a foreigner 
when the latter was about to visit this country, writes, 
in 1679, that " there are several sorts of compounded 
ales, as cock-ale, wormwood ale, lemon-ale, scurvy- 
grass-ale, college ale ... to be had at Hercules' 
Pillars, near the Temple." ^ 

Hercules' Pillars Alley took its name from this 
tavern, which was the chief of several situated 
in this spot. Another of them was the ' Crowne,' 
but it could not have been of much account, and the 
only contemporary reference to it (Pepys's) calls it 
" a little ordinary in Hercules' Pillars Alley ... a 

1 Page 35. 

2 Wroth tells us that Evans, once proprietor of the Hercules' 
Pillars, in 1738 reopened Cuper's Gardens, Lambeth, a rival to the 
better-remembered Vauxhall {London Pleasure Gardens). 

278 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

poor scurvy place," although the Diarist dined there 
on Jan. 30, 1667, and " had a good dinner," ^ 

Another tavern close by which existed in Pepys's 
day, and much earlier, was the ' Dolphin,' situated 
opposite Fetter Lane. It is interesting as being one 
of the first houses where tobacco was sold, and we 
find its proprietor, Timothy Howe, and a neighbour 
in Ram Alley, indicted in 1618 " for keepinge their 
tobacco shops open all nighte and fyers in the same 
without any chimney, and uttering hott water and 
selling ale without licence, to the great disquietude, 
terror, and annoyance of that neighbourhood," and 
again, in 1630, they were 'presented' "for annoyinge the 
judges at Serjeants' inne with the stench and smell 
of their tobacco." ^ We do not, however, know how 
they emerged from this truly Jacobean counter- 
blast. 

Again crossing Fleet Street, we find the site of 
another once well-known inn at No. 164. This was 
the ' Horn Tavern, which is now appropriately 
revivified in Anderton's Hotel. This hostelry is 
recorded as having been bequeathed, under the title 
of the ' Horn in the Hoop,' to the Goldsmiths' Company 
by one Thomas Atte Hay, himself a goldsmith and 
member of this guild, so early as 1405, and it is still 
the property of the company. 

There is a reference to the tavern in Machyn's 
Diary under date of 1557, and just forty years later 
we learn from the Register of St. Dunstan's that 
" Raphe was slained at the Home, buryed." 

An early seventeenth-century reference to the 
Horn Tavern is found in Father Hubbard's Tales, 

1 Another small tavern known to Pepyswas the ' Golden Eagle,' 
in New Street, between Fetter Lane and Shoe Lane. 

2 Register of St. Dunstan's, quoted by Noble, and Burn's Tokens. 

279 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

printed in quarto in 1604,^ where the following passage 
occurs : — 

" And when they pleased to think upon us, 
told us they were to dine together at the Horn 
in Fleet Street, being a house where their lawyer 
resorted. . . . He embraced one young gentleman, 
and gave him many riotous instructions how to 
carry himself . . . his eating must be in some 
famous tavern as the Horn,^ the Mitre, or the 
Mermaid, etc." 

The grouping together of the tavern I am here 
dealing with, with such notable hostelries as the ' Mitre ' 
and the ' Mermaid,' seems to indicate that its fame and 
reputation were far greater than would be imagined 
from the lack of information we have about it ; for, 
beyond the fact that Sir John Baker is recorded as living 
there ^ in 1640, and that a token of this house is in the 
Beaufoy Collection, we know practically nothing more 
about the place. 

It was not far from the ' Horn ' that Mrs. Salmon's 
Waxworks were first exhibited at 189 Fleet Street, 
which was rebuilt for Praed's Bank, in 1802 ; and 
Snelling, the well-known numismatist, lived next door 
to the tavern, one of his books bearing the imprint : 
" printed for T. Snelling next the Horn Tavern in 
Fleet Street, 1766, who buys and sells all sorts of 
coins and medals." ^ 

^ It is quoted in London Past and Present. 

^ At this time the ' Horn ' is described as being between the ' Red 
Lion,' over against Serjeants' Inn, and Tlirce-Legged Alley, over 
against Whitefriars. 

^ See Domestic State Papers. 

* Anderton's Coffee-House preceded Anderton's Hotel, which was 
rebuilt in 1879-S0, and now occupies the sites of Nos. 162 to 165 Fleet 
Street. It was at Anderton's Coffee-House that the St. Dunstan's 
Club was first started, in 1770, by the Rev. J. Williamson, Vicar of 
St. Dunstan's. 

280 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

Notwithstanding the fame of the ' Devil,' the 
' Mitre,' and the ' Cock,' it is probable that the renown 
of the Cheshire Cheese Tavern, to which we now 
come, surpasses that of all Fleet Street hostelries. The 
combination of three reasons is sufficient to account 
for this : its antiquity ; its association with Dr. Johnson 
and innumerable other celebrities before and after his 
day ; and above all, I think, the fact that the place still 
remains (almost, if not quite, the only survival) as it 
existed in earlier times. When you enter its precincts 
through the exiguous Wine Office Court, on which it 
abuts, you seem to be stepping back into those past 
times when, as Johnson once phrased it, " a tavern 
chair was the throne of human felicity." The ghosts 
of earlier days (and what ghosts !) appear about 
you, and in the incorporeal presence of Ben Jon- 
son and Herrick, Pope and Congreve, Steele and 
Addison, Johnson and Burke and Boswell, or the later 
shades of Douglas Jerrold, Mark Lemon, Dickens, 
Thackeray, Tom Hood, Tom Taylor, and Tennyson, 
you forget the rush of the twentieth century 
and the noise of motors and taxi-cabs, and almost 
feel as if you could say with the poet : — 

" . . . Et Ego in arcadia vixi." 

There is little to be gleaned about the history and 
associations of the ' Cheshire Cheese ' beyond what is 
incorporated in the little Book of the Cheese, which was 
compiled by T. W. Reid, and of which a fourth edition 
was edited by Mr. R. R. D. Adams in 1901. In this 
compilation, notwithstanding certain redundancies and 
almost inevitable repetitions, you will find not only 
what historical facts are known of the place, but also 
much of interest concerning its past patrons ; its waiters 
(among them old ' William,' who would ask, " Any 

281 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

gentleman say pudden ? " and was not at all disturbed 
when a crusty old guest replied, " No gentleman says 
pudden ") ; its wonderfully and fearfully made Lark 
Pudding, concocted in mystery and eaten in true 
gourmet silence ; the clubs that have met here : the 
' Johnson,' the ' 49,' the ' Rhymers,' the ' Soakers,' 
the ' St, Dunstan's,' and the rest. Another thing that 
helps to differentiate the ' Cheshire Cheese ' from other 
Fleet Street taverns, is the fact that it has not only 
been much written about (American vying with British 
journalists in doing it honour), but has been much 
painted and sketched : Mr. Seymour Lucas and Mr. 
Dendy Sadler having reproduced its earlier social life, and 
Herbert Railton and others the picturesque outlines 
of the old place. Indeed, it stands to-day as practically 
the last of those centres in Fleet Street (or Brain Street, 
as Sala happily termed it) in which we can, with little 
trouble to the imagination, rehabilitate the life of the 
past. 

When the ' Cheshire Cheese ' was actually first 
started is unknown, but we can at least date 
it back to Elizabethan days, for it was here, it 
is said, that Ben Jonson and Sylvester had their 
famous couplet-making bout, when the latter pro- 
duced the lines : — 

" I, Sylvester, 
Kiss'd your sister." 

To which Ben replied with : — 

" I, Ben Jonson, 
Kiss'd your wife." 

" That's not a rhyme," said Sylvester. " No," 
replied Jonson, " but it's true." There is said, too, to 
282 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

be extant a manuscript play/ dating from the same 
period, which contains these Hnes : — 

" Heaven bless the ' Cheese ' and all its goodly fare — 
I wish to Jove I could go daily there. 
Then fill a bumper up, my good friend, please — 
May fortune ever bless the 'Cheshire Cheese'"; 

while Herrick's apostrophe to Ben Jonson : — 

" Ah, Ben ! 
Say how or when 
Shall we, thy guests, 
Meet at those lyric feasts 
Made at the Sun, 
The Cheese, the Triple Tun," 

is supposed to contain an allusion to Jonson's visits 
here ; and although the ' Dog ' is sometimes printed 
instead of the ' Cheese,' Mr. Reid says he feels con- 
vinced that the ' Cheese,' being opposite the ' Triple 
Tun ' or ' Three Tuns,' is the house Herrick meant. 
Charles ii. is recorded as having once partaken of 
refreshment here, with Nell Gwynn ; and, to come to 
later days, a small book called Round London, printed 
in 1725, describes the place as " Ye Olde Cheshire 
Cheese Tavern, near ye Flete Prison, an eating-house 
for goodly fare." 

Wine Office Court, in which the ' Cheese ' stands, 
is notable for having once been the residence of 
Goldsmith (a frequent visitor to the tavern), and 
here he wrote, or partly wrote, the Vicar of Wake- 
field. The court takes its name from the fact 
that the house where wine licences were granted, 
stood close by. At one time a fig tree grew here, 
it having been planted over a century ago, by the 

1 The Philadelphia Times for October 1884, quoted in the Book of 
the Cheese. 

283 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

then Vicar of St. Bride's, who Hved at No. 12 Fleet 
Street.^ 

Among the many references to the ' Cheshire Cheese,' 
two dating from the eighteenth century deserve men- 
tion : the first, taken from a paper called Common 
Sense, or the Englishman's Journal (printed and sold 
by J. Purser in White Fryars, and G. Hawkins at 
' Milton's Head,' between the Two Temple Gates, Fleet 
Street) for April 23, 1737, runs thus : — 

" On Sunday, April 17, one Harper, who formerly 
lived with Mr. Holyoake at the sign of the ' Old 
Cheshire Cheese,' in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, 
for eight years, found Means to conceal himself in 
the House , . . and took away a small Box contain- 
ing £200 and Notes to the value of £600 more." The 
account goes on to say that Harper, being disturbed, 
was obliged to hide in a chimney, where he was dis- 
covered with his booty, and was afterwards carried before 
the Lord Mayor, who committed him to Newgate. 

The other reference is from the Morning Herald 
and Daily Advertiser for Monday, Aug. 9, 1784, by 
which we learn that a porter in the Temple named 
John Gromont induced a woman with whom he lived, 
but who had left him, to take a drink at a public- 
house in Wine Office Court, " where, starting up in 
a fit of frenzy, he cut the woman's throat"; and we 
are further told that " before the transaction he had 
made several attempts to destroy himself at Mr. 
Bosher's, the Rainbow, opposite the end of Chancery 
Lane, in Fleet Street, and other public-houses in the 
neighbourhood." 

Cyrus Jay, in 1868, and Cyrus Redding, ten years 
earlier, have both left word-pictures of the past life 

1 There was once another fig tree growhig near by, at the sign of 
the ' Fig-Tree, ' Fleet Street. 
284 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

of the ' Cheshire Cheese ' ; and there is extant a story 
of Sala, who, having been sent to Paris by the Daily 
Telegraph, to write on French cookery and restaurant- 
Hfe, praised both unreservedly, and greatly to the 
detriment of English fare and tavern-management ; 
but, on his return to London, rushed off immediately 
to the ' Cheshire Cheese,' and exclaimed to the head- 
waiter, " William, bring me a beefsteak, some potatoes 
in their jackets, and a pint of ale. I've had nothing 
to eat for six weeks." 

Poets have sung the place, John Davidson and 
Mr. Rhys among them, and at least once it has entered 
into fiction, when, in the Tale of Two Cities, Sidney 
Carton takes Charles Darnay to " the nearest tavern 
to dine well at," after the trial at the Old Bailey. 

The ' Triple Tun,' or the ' Three Tuns,' opposite 
the ' Cheshire Cheese,' on the south side of Fleet 
Street, is known to us only by Herrick's reference 
to it, quoted above. There was another tavern of 
the same name, frequented by Pepys, near the corner 
of Chandos Street and standing on the site of 66 
Bedford Street, Strand. 

Another interesting old tavern on the north side 
of Fleet Street was the ' Globe,' which stood where 
No. 134 is now, close to Shoe Lane. It was exist- 
ing in 1636, and thirteen years later one Henry 
Hothersall obtained a forty-one years' lease of it 
" at the yearly rent of £75 and ten gallons of 
Canary sack " and £400 fine. He expended a large 
sum in rebuilding the premises, and after the Great 
Fire obtained a fresh lease for sixty-one years at 
£40 per annum, together with a piece of ground in the 
rear " for the more commodious landing of his wines 
from Shoee Lane into his backyard." ^ A tragic occur- 
^ Noble's Memorials of Temple Bar. 

285 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

rence here is thus recorded by Luttrell in his Diary 
under date of Nov. 14, 1684 : " Sir WilHam Estcourt, 
foreman of Mr. Noseworthy's jury, was with some 
of his fellow-jurymen and gentlemen of the country 
at the Globe tavern in Fleetstreet, where arose a 
quarrell between Sir William, Mr. St. Johns, and 
Col. Webb ; but after some words they fell on Sir 
William, and most barbarously killed him, notwith- 
standing several persons were in the company : he 
had five wounds about him ; and the next day the 
coroner's inquest found it murther in St. Johns 
and accessary in Webb ; on which they were 
both committed to Newgate." Both St. Johns 
and Webb were condemned to death ; but sub- 
sequently, pleading the King's pardon, they were 
discharged. 

This house existed down to comparatively recent 
times, and Timbs tells us that he remembers it as a 
handsomely appointed tavern. It is, however, many 
a year since it w^as one of the features of Fleet Street. 
In the eighteenth century it was well known for its 
card-parties, and the clubs which had their head- 
quarters here. Among the latter were the Robin 
Hood and the Wednesday Clubs. The latter was a 
favourite one of Goldsmith's. Says Washington Irving 
in his Life of the poet : " Another of these free-and- 
easy clubs met on Wednesday evenings at the Globe. 
It was somewhat in the style of the Three Jolly 
Pigeons ; songs, jokes, dramatic imitations, burlesque 
parodies, and broad sallies of humour formed a con- 
trast to the sententious morality, pedantic casuistry, 
and polished sarcasm of the learned critic. . . . John- 
son used to be severe upon Goldsmith for mingling 
in these motley circles, observing that, having been 
originally poor, he had contracted a love for low com- 
286 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

pany. Goldsmith, however, was guided not by a 
taste for what was low, but what was comic and 
characteristic." 

Goldsmith and his friends often finished their 
' Shoemaker's Holiday ' by supping at the ' Globe,' 
says Timbs who gives a list of some of the curious 
characters who were wont to forgather on these occa- 
sions, but whose names are now, for the most part, 
among forgotten things, although they included such 
once well-known ones as those of Macklin and Dunstall 
the actors, Woodfall the printer, and Lord Mayor Smith. 

One of Goldsmith's delights was listening to a 
man of immense size, named Gordon, singing ' Notting- 
ham Ale,' or hearing the surgeon manque, Glover, give 
his clever imitations of well-known histrions of the 
day. 

It was at the ' Globe,' or rather on his way to it from 
the Temple, that Goldsmith made his well-known epi- 
gram on Edward Purdon, a constant frequenter of 
the tavern : — 

" Here lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed, 
Who long was a bookseller's hack ; 
He had led such a damnable life in this world 
I don't think that he'll wish to come back." 

Once more crossing to the south side of Fleet Street, 
we find two taverns close by Water Lane : the ' Old 
Ship ' and the ' Boar's Head.' Beyond the fact of 
adding to the not inconsiderable list of Fleet Street 
hostelries, the former has no history. The latter, 
however, which stood on the site of No. 66 Fleet Street, 
was said to date from the year 1646, although Boar's 
Head Alley, to which it presumably gave its name, is 
known to have been in existence in the early years of 
Elizabeth's reign. In 1775, Sarah Fortescue, who is 

287 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

described as a widow and victualler at the Boar's Head 
Ale-House, was charged with keeping a disorderly place. 

Little is recorded of the ' Black Lion,' in White- 
friars, of which Shepherd has left us a spirited water- 
colour drawing ^ dated 1859 ; or of the Rose Tavern, 
at Fleet Bridge, of which a token, dated 1649, 
exists ; and the names of the ' Golden Lion,' the 
' Seven Stars,' the ' St. Dunstan's,' the ' Grey- 
hound,' mentioned by Machyn in 1557, and the 'Cross 
Keys,' ^ have come down to us in such an obscure 
way, that it is difficult to localise exactly their re- 
spective sites. 

The ' Green Dragon,' however, which stood on 
the site of 56 Fleet Street, is recorded so early as 
1636. R was burnt in the Great Fire, but rebuilt in the 
following year, being then set back about six feet.^ 
It was noted for the clubs held here connected with the 
Popish Plot, and it was from its windows that Roger 
North witnessed one of the annual burnings of the Pope, 
which were once a feature of Fleet Street. 

The ' Red Lion, " over against Serjeants' Inn," was 
another hostelry which was biu-nt in the Great Fire, but 
not rebuilt. It dated from the later sixteenth century 
(a mention occurs of it in 1592), and was situated in 
Red Lion Court, No. 169 Fleet Street. In 1602, Ambrose 
Lupton, the vintner, described as " inn-holder at the 
* Red Lyon ' in Fleete Streete," who " by his freedome 
keepeth a cellar at the Red Lyon Gate," had a number 
of cans and pots seized for false measure. 

A still earlier tavern was the ' Castle,' which stood 

^ In the Grace Collection. 

2 The ' Cross Keys ' was at the Chancery Lane end of Fleet Street, 
and was kept by one William Colborn ; this was stated by a follower 
of Titus Oates "to have been one of the first houses marked for de- 
struction by the Jesuits." 

' Noble's Memorials of Temple Bar. 

288 




lii a rf^;^ 



»^j»i»i.'- '-ty-ii^' 



I IIIC IIOI.T IN TUN INN. 



To face page 28 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

at the west corner of Shoe Lane, abutting on Fleet Street, 
and is recorded as being in existence so far back as 1432. 
It was,'during the earlier half of the seventeenth century, 
the rendezvous of the members of the Clockmakers' 
Company, who held their meetings here till 1666. At 
a later date, when rebuilt after the Great Fire, it is 
said to have been decorated by the largest sign in 
London,^ and about this time its proprietor was 
Alderman Sir John Tash who died in 1735, having 
made a fortune as a wine merchant and innkeeper. 

Another tavern, only less ancient than the ' Castle,' 
was the ' Bolt-in-Tun,' a record of which occurs in the 
Patent Rolls for 1443.2 it took its title from the well- 
known rebus on the name of Prior Bolton of St. 
Bartholomew's, Smithfield. References to this house, 
which was once a great coaching rendezvous, are found 
in the Parish Registers under date 1629, and again in 
1660, and five years later, during the Plague, we read 
that " a boy found dead in the hay-loft, in Boult-in-Tun 
Stables, was buried." An eighteenth-century record tells 
us that, in 1759, the keeper of it, one Thomas Walker, 
was charged with carrying it on as a disorderly house. 

One other place which should properly be mentioned 
in this chapter is Lamb's ' only Salopian Shop,' ^ 
on the south side of the thoroughfare, near Bridge 
Street. Saloop-houses were to be met with in some 
numbers in Georgian London. In them was sold a 
decoction of sassafras, which was originally made from 
Salep — the roots of the Orchis mascula. In the eight- 
eenth century. Dr. Percival was a great believer in 

^ Hatton's New View of London, 1708. 

2 Larwood and Hotten, in their History of Signboards, state that 
in a licence of alienation to the Friars Carmelites of London, of 
certain premises in the parish of St. Dunstan, Fleet Street, ' Hospitium 
vocatum la Boltenton ' is mentioned as a boundary. 
See Lamb's Praise of Chimney -Sweeps, 

T 289 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

this form of the herb, and he affirmed that " it had the 
property of concealing the taste of salt water, which 
property, it was thought, might be turned to account 
in long sea voyages." ^ The last place in which the 
decoction was sold appears to have been Read's Coffee- 
House, at 102 Fleet Street, the original of Lamb's 
' Salopian Shop,' which existed till 1833, having been 
first opened in 1719, by one Lockyer,^ who, according to 
Hotten, took ' Mount Pleasant ' for his sign. The name 
of Read reminds me that before taking leave of the 
Fleet Street taverns I ought to say a word about the 
' Mug House,' in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, which 
was kept by a man of this name. 

Mug-house clubs were very numerous in the earlier 
part of the eighteenth century. They took their title 
from the fact that each member drank his ale out 
of his own particular mug. The history of these 
mug - house clubs enters largely into the political 
annals of the day. Their members were of the Whig 
persuasion, and were ever ready to go forth and do battle 
against the adherents of the Pretender, when the latter 
were bent on mischief. The mug-house in Salisbury 
Court was one of the first started, and its frequenters 
were among the noisiest of the day. Indeed, on one 
occasion — July 20, 1716 — they created such a disturb- 
ance, by drinking party-toasts in the parlour, with the 
windows wide open, that the mob (which must have 
contained a large leaven of Jacobites) became so en- 
raged that it threatened to pull down the place and 
make a bonfire in Fleet Street of its contents. The 
Club immediately closed the windows and barricaded 
the premises, and having sent a messenger, by a back 
door, for help to another mug-house in Tavistock 
Street, Covent Garden, awaited events. Soon a noisy 

• Timbs. ^ Lockyer died in 1739. 

290 



TAVERNS AND COFFEE-HOUSES 

body of rescuers was seen proceeding down the Strand 
and Fleet Street, armed with all sorts of implements. 
On their arrival, the Salisbury Court ' Mugs ' sallied out, 
and the mob, caught between two fires, beat a hasty 
retreat. But it was only for a time ; the mob boiling 
with rage at this reverse, and merely being kept within 
bounds by the knowledge that a regiment of horse 
at Whitehall had received orders to ride into Fleet 
Street on the first provocation. Three days after the 
first attack, therefore, one Vaughan urged the people 
to take revenge for their defeat, regardless of con- 
sequences. Led by him, and shouting, " High Church 
and Ormond ! down with the Mug-House," they re- 
newed their attack. Read, fearing that his premises 
would be demolished and their contents destroyed, 
thereupon threw open a window, and pointing a gun 
at the mob, swore he would kill the first who tried to 
effect an entrance. Vaughan and his band, enraged 
at this threat, thereupon made a determined rush at 
the house. Read took aim, and firing, shot Vaughan 
who fell dead on the spot. His followers, driven to still 
greater fury at this untoward event, swore they would 
hang Read from his own sign, and succeeded in forcing 
their way into the house. Luckily for him, he had been 
able to escape by a back entrance ; but everything was 
torn from the building and burnt, and the infuriated 
people were only prevented from setting fire to 
the mug-house by the arrival of the Sheriffs with a 
number of constables. The Riot Act, although read, 
was helpless in restraining the violence of the crowd, 
and it was only on the military being sent for that it 
was possible to disperse it. 

Read was afterwards apprehended and tried for the 
murder of Vaughan, but was subsequently found guilty 
of manslaughter only ; while some of the rioters were 

291 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

hanged " at the end of Salisbury Court, in Fleet 
Street," on Sept. 21, 1716. Some years later, 
the Salisbury Court mug-house was demolished, and 
gradually this by-product of political enmity died a 
natural death. 

I may make an end of this chapter by reminding the 
reader that Cogers' Hall, the headquarters of the 
Society of Cogers, was situated at 15 Bride Lane, and 
that the Discussion Hall, where the society founded 
by Daniel Mason in 1755, and including in its number 
such famous men as Curran and O'Connell, held their 
revels, was at 10 Shoe Lane. 



292 



CHAPTER VIII 

FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN OF FLEET STREET 

As we have seen in the preceding chapters, a vast 
number of notable people have been connected with 
Fleet Street from very early times — some as residents, 
others in a more fortuitous way. Forming an import- 
ant portion of the principal highway connecting the 
City and the West End, Fleet Street has witnessed 
probably, a greater number of splendid pageants 
than any street in London, with the exception of the 
Strand. The long roll of British monarchs has passed 
along it in gorgeous procession ; civic glory has been 
witnessed in it, on the innumerable occasions when 
its apotheosis in the Lord Mayor's Show has caused 
the thoroughfare to become gay with decorations ; 
and all sorts of pageants — of which those in which 
Queen Victoria passed to St. Paul's on the occasions 
of her Jubilees were the crowning glory — have en- 
shrined this old, time-worn street in the history of 
the country. 

It has, too, been the scene, often enough, of 
darker doings. Wat Tyler's insurrection did not 
leave it untouched, for we are expressly told that 
the rioters destroyed two forges here, and, doubtless, 
did much unspecified damage. A few years later, 
what is euphemistically termed " a great debate " 
— otherwise, one of those domestic battles in which 

293 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

the period was rife — took place here between the 
servants of Waltham, Bishop of Sahsbury, then Lord 
Treasurer, and the citizens, in 1392, on which the King 
" sesed the franchise and the Hbertie of London into 
hys hand, and the Kyng hadd of London xm. 1. Ub' 
or he wolde be plesyd." ^ 

Again, in 1441, we read of " a great affray in Flete 
Strete atweene ye getters of the Innys of Court and 
the inhabytauntesof the same strete," in which the 
ringleader appears to have been one Herbottell, 
"a man of Clyfford's Inne." Seventeen years later, 
another riot of a similar character took place in Fleet 
Street, when, according to Holingshead, " the students 
were driven with archers from the Conduit back to 
their Inns, and some slain, including the Queue's 
Attornie." 

On this occasion, the King was so wroth with the 
students that he " committed the principall governors 
of Furnivall's, Clifford's, and Barnard's Inn to prison 
in the Castle of Hertford, and William Tailor, Alderman 
of that ward, with mani other, were sent to Wyndesore 
Castell the 7th of Maie." 

But perhaps no scene in the fifteenth century so 
disgraced Fleet Street as that in which Eleanor Cob- 
ham, Duchess of Gloucester, who had been accused 
of witchcraft, figured. The Duchess, luckier than 
some of her supposed confederates, who suffered death, 
was obliged to do public penance, and, on Nov. 13, 
1441, having been brought from Westminster to the 
Temple Stairs, she, holding a heavy wax taper in her 
hand, " went so thoro the Fflet Strete on her feete 
and hoodeless " to St. Paul's where she offered her 
taper at the high altar. ^ 

In the following century (1522), another noble, but 

^ Chronicle of the Grey Friars. ^ Stow's Annals. 

294 



FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN 

still unluckier victim, came to the Temple Stairs, and 
was led through Fleet Street to the Tower — notably 
Edward, Duke of Buckingham, into whose mouth 
Shakespeare has put one of his finest speeches. 

Coronation processions have been too numerous 
to be specified, but I may remind the reader that at 
that of Anne Bullen (May 31, 1533) the Fleet Street 
Conduit " was newlie paynted, and all the arms 
and angels refreshed," ^ that upon it " was made a 
tower with foure turretts, and in every turrett stood 
one of the Cardinall vertues with their tokens and 
properties ; " and that, on this occasion, Temple Bar, 
also newly painted and repaired, bore its burden of 
" divers singing children." 

Another unfortunate queen was proclaimed in 
Fleet Street, Lady Jane Grey, and a few days 
later passed in state to the Tower, which was so soon 
to be her last resting-place. No doubt, on this occasion 
as on others — the entry of Philip and Mary, that 
of Queen Elizabeth, the Proclamation of James i., 
the reception of the King of Denmark, the return of 
Charles ii., and so many more — the Conduit bulked 
largely in the scheme of decoration, and was bedizened 
with paint and flags, and became, for the nonce, a nest 
of singing-birds. 

Notable funerals have also been witnessed by Fleet 
Street : that of the Earl of Oxford in 1562 ; that of Sir 
Edmund Berry Godfrey, viewed by vast crowds, from 
Bridewell to Charing Cross, in 1678 ; that of Lord 
Nelson in 1805 ; and that of the Duke of Wellington 
in 1852 — to mention but these. 

Then there were such processions as those of the 
Scald Miserable Masons, in 1742 ; and the annual 
" Burning of the Pope," which obtained during the 

1 stow. 

295 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

latter years of Charles ii.'s reign. This ceremony took 
place at the King's Head Tavern, near Chancery Lane, 
and is graphically described by Roger North, who tells 
how, on one occasion, the Archbishop of York asked 
Lord Justice North what was to be done to quell the 
riot with which the proceedings were always accom- 
panied ; and received the laconic reply, " Fear God, and 
don't fear the people." ^ 

Fleet Street figures largely, too, in such matters of 
history as the " Wilkes and Liberty " riots, in 1763, 
and again in 1769, when the famous " Battle of Temple 
Bar " took place ; the Gordon Riots, when the Fleet 
Prison was destroyed and such havoc played with 
London generally ; the Hardy " Treason Trials " of 
1794, when Hardy, who lived at No. 161 Fleet Street 
(next door to the place where Carlile had his " Free- 
Thought " headquarters), was brought to trial, and 
Lord Eldon got mobbed, and, had it not been for his 
presence of mind, might have been severely maltreated 
by the crowd. ^ 

A list of such matters might be carried on intermin- 
ably. Enough has, I think, been set down to confirm 
what I began by saying as to the important part this 
historic thoroughfare has borne in the larger annals of 
the country. 

To turn to its more domestic side, we shall find that 
a number of interesting people have been connected, 
more directly, with the street. 

The names of some very early inhabitants are 
preserved in the " Grant to erect a Penthouse for the 
Aqueduct in Fleetstrete," to which I have before 

^ Hogarth has left us a well-known picture of the " Burning of the 
Rumps " at Temple Bar, another political manifestation of the period. 

* There is an interesting autobiographical account of the incident 
in Twiss's Life of Eldon. 

296 



FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN 

referred. As it is interesting to know the appellations 
of some of those who lived in Fleet Street in 1388, I 
give them here : John Rote, John Walworth, Robert 
Bryan, Thomas Dukes, George Cressy, Remund Stan- 
dulf, John Chamberlyn, Robert Ikford, Richard Middle- 
tone, Roger Rabat, Robert Mauncel, John Emmede, 
Nicholas Simond, Adam Jurdan, Robert Walter, John 
Attebille, Walter Hoggeslade, Walter Dunmowe, William 
Balle, Roger Kempstone, Alan Ulryk, and John 
Derneford. 

Among more notable residents in the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries were the Pastons, whose letters 
form such valuable documents on the rather vague and 
shadowy Middle Ages. They had their town house in 
Fleet Street, as we have seen in the first chapter, a house 
mentioned occasionally in their correspondence. 

But it is in the days of the Tudors that we find 
Fleet Street becoming the centre, not only of literary 
activity, but also of fashion. Sir Amias Paulet, whose 
name is familiar to students of this period, is found 
writing to the still more famous Walsingham, " from 
my poor lodging in Fleet Street," in the year 1588 ; 
and only a few years earlier, the ' thorough ' Earl of 
Strafford was born in Chancery Lane. Bradford, one 
of the martyrs under the Marian persecution, was, 
in 1553, " taken at Mr. Elsing's house in Fleet Street," 
as recorded by Foxe. 

The names of many of the great Elizabethan drama- 
tists enter into the annals of the thoroughfare from 
the fact of their bearers having been connected with 
the Temple : such as, for instance, Francis Beaumont, 
Ford, and Marston, who was once a lecturer at the Middle 
Temple to which Chaucer had belonged in earlier days. 

Of Michael Drayton, the connection is even closer, 
for, with the help of Aubrey, we are able to locate him 

297 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

as an actual resident in Fleet Street, "at ye large- 
windowe house next the east end of St. Dunstan's 
church." This house was numbered 186, and existed 
so late as 1885 ; although it had naturally been altered 
and restored. Mr. Hutton, referring to it, adds : " but 
its next-door neighbour city-wards still showed what 
was its appearance when Drayton occupied it, and 
published in 1608 an edition of his Poems ' at the 
Shop of John Smithwick, St. Dunstan's Church Yard 
under the Diall.' " As the author of Literary Landmarks 
of London properly states, St. Dunstan's Churchyard ^ 
was the Paternoster Row of those days, and was as 
much frequented by booksellers. 

Shakespeare's connection with Fleet Street cannot, 
by the widest stretch of the imagination, be considered 
a very close one, but various references in his plays 
form a link between him and Clement's Inn, York 
House, the Temple Gardens, and other landmarks ; 
and when Twelfth Night was produced in Middle Temple 
Hall in 1601, the dramatist is thought to have probably 
directed the performance, or at least to have been 
present during its progress. 

His great contemporary, Ben Jonson, on the other 
hand, was closely associated with Fleet Street and its 
purlieus. He is said to have passed some years of his 
childhood in Hartshorne Lane, later known as North- 
umberland Street, Strand ; he is credibly believed 
to have "wrought on the garden wall of Lincoln's Line" 
as a bricklayer, as recorded by Aubrey ; and he was 
certainly intimate with the neighbourhood and " the 
walks of Lincoln's Inn under the Elms," as he calls them 
in one of his plays ; while he must have superintended 
numbers of those masques for which he was famous, 
when they were performed in the Old Hall there. 

^ The poet Campion was buried here in 1620. 
298 



FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN 

But his closest connection with Fleet Street was as 
a resident, for, according to Aubrey, he lived " without 
Temple Barre at a combe-maker's shop about the 
Elephant and Castle," which stood on the south side 
of the street between Temple Bar and Essex Street, 
and as the presiding deity at the symposia held at 
the Devil Tavern next to Temple Bar. Here, he 
tells us himself, he " drank bad wine " ; here, in the 
Apollo Room, he was Sir Oracle ; and he it was who 
wrote the rules of the Club in pure and elegant Latin. 
We can, in imagination, see him leaving his favourite 
resort on that famous occasion when, having " drunk 
well and had brave notions," his eyes flashing in a 
fine frenzy, and his sublime head striking the stars, 
he went home and penned the great speech addressed 
to Scylla's ghost in Cataline. 

John Taylor, the ' Water Poet,' can claim a con- 
nection rather with the river side of Fleet Street than 
with that portion of the thoroughfare which chiefly 
concerns us, but two of his contemporaries, George 
Wither and James Shirley, are more nearly associated 
with the neighbourhood : for the former is said to have 
died in the Savoy, and, according to Anthony a Wood, 
was buried in the chapel there, " between the east door 
and the south end " ; while the latter was, at one period 
of his life, a schoolmaster in Whitefriars, and was living 
in Fleet Street, near the Inner Temple Gate. The 
Great Fire not only caused the destruction of his resi- 
dence, but was also, it seems, responsible for his death ; 
for he was obliged to hurriedly leave his threatened 
house, and seek shelter in St. Giles in the Fields, 
where — owing, probably, to exposure combined with 
shock — he died only a few hours after the conflagration. 

Edmund Spenser's gentle presence must have often 
been seen in Fleet Street when the poet was on one of 

299 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

his not infrequent visits to Essex House ; but the 
connection of Milton with this part of London is a 
closer one, for we know that after his return from the 
Continent, in 1639, he lodged with a tailor — Russell 
by name — ^in St. Bride's Churchyard. The actual 
position of the house is now rather difficult to trace, 
but Howitt, who refers to it in his Homes and Haunts 
of the British Poets, helps us to locate it. Here is 
what he says about the place and its situation : — 

" The house, as I learned from an old and most re- 
spectable inhabitant of St. Bride's Parish, was on 
the left hand as you proceed towards Fleet Street 
through the avenue. It was a very small tenement, very 
old, and was burned down on the 24th of November, 
1824, at which time it was occupied by a hairdresser. 
It was — in proof of its age — without party walls, and 
much decayed. The back part of the Punch office 
now occupies its site." 

The sad domestic episode of Milton's life dates 
from the period of his residence here, according to 
Aubrey, who states that when his first wife, Mary 
Powell, " came to live with her husband at Mr. Russell's 
in St. Bride's Churchyard, she found it very solitary ; 
no company came to her, oftentimes heard his nephews 
beaten and cry ; this life was irksome to her, and 
so she went to her parents." 

Not far from St. Bride's Churchyard is Chancery 
Lane, and close to the south-west corner of that 
thoroughfare lived Izaak Walton, Sir John Hawkins, 
when engaged on his Life of Walton, took some pains 
to identify the residence of the Gentle Angler, and he 
sums up his investigations in the following words : 
" Izaak Walton dwelt on the north side of Fleet Street, 
in a house two doors west of the end of Chancery Lane, 
and abutting on a messuage known by the sign of 
300 




if I 

"1 m , i^^^r . Mil «st- «»- 



i 



ANCIENT HOUSIC AT THE CORNER OF CHANCERY I.ANE. 

To face page 301. 



FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN 

the Harrow . . . now the old timber house at the 
south-west corner of Chancery Lane, till within these 
few years (1760), was known by that sign ; it is 
therefore beyond doubt that Walton lived at the 
very next door, and in this house he is, in the deed 
above referred to, which bears date 1624, said to have 
followed the trade of a Linen-Draper. It further appears 
by that deed, that the house was in the joint occupa- 
tion of Izaak Walton and John Mason, hosier, from 
whence we may conclude that half a shop was suffi- 
cient for the business of Walton." 

At a later date Walton removed to a house at the 
Holborn end of Chancery Lane, supposed to have 
been next to Crown Court and to have stood on the 
site of No. 120.1 jj^ either house he was close to 
Shoe Lane, and in the Harp Alley leading from this 
street he used to buy his fishing-tackle : "If you 
will buy choice hooks," says he, in his Angler, " I will 
one day walk with you to Charles Kerbye's, in Harp 
Alley, Shoe Lane, who is the most exact hook-maker 
that the nation affords." 

When the Compleat Angler was issued, it was but 
appropriate that Walton should, although then living 
in Clerkenwell, select a publisher in Fleet Street, close 
to his old home ; and accordingly, in 1653, appeared 
his famous work : " sold by Richard Harriot in St, 
Dunstan's Church Yard, Fleet Street." One shilling 
and sixpence could then have bought a book that has 
now become worth far more than its weight in gold. 

While yet Walton was a young man selling cloth 
in Fleet Street, and occasionally slipping away to ply 
his rod in the Lea, there was born, close by his shop, 
a poet whose love for the country was no less marked 
than his own. This was Cowley, whose father, a 

1 Hutton. 

301 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

grocer, resided in Fleet Street, not far from Chancery 
Lane, in a house which is known to have " abutted 
on Serjeants' Inn." Here his famous son, Abraham, 
was born in the year 1618. But Cowley, though a 
Cockney, was never a Londoner, and this accident 
of his birthplace is the only really important con- 
nection he had with the City. 

But other poets and dramatists of the period are 
more closely associated with this part of the town. 
For instance, Richard Lovelace, whose immortal " To 
Althea from Prison " was written in the Gate-house at 
Westminster in 1648, is said to have died, ten years 
later, in a miserable lodging in Gunpowder Alley, off 
Shoe Lane, his body being laid to rest in old St. 
Bride's Church. 

Shadwell, too, an almost forgotten Laureate, was 
a member of the Middle Temple, and resided for a 
time in Salisbury Court, now Salisbury Square, before 
he flitted to Chelsea where he lies buried in an un- 
known grave. 

Death, as in the case of Lovelace, connects Nat 
Lee, the clever playwright but indifferent actor, with 
the neighbourhood of Fleet Street, for, according to 
Oldys the antiquary, it was when " returning one 
night from the Bear and Harrow in Butcher Row, 
through Clare Market, to his lodgings in Duke Street, 
that, overladen with wine, Lee fell down on the ground 
as some say — according to others on a bulk, and was 
killed or stifled in the snow. He was buried in the 
parish church of St. Clement's Danes." 

But a greater than Lovelace, or Shadwell, or Lee 
lived in this neighbourhood of many memories, 
for during the years 1673 to 1682 John Dry den is 
recorded by Peter Cunningham as residing in, or close 
by, Salisbury Court, probably about the same time as 
302 



FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN 

his friend Shadwell had a house in the court. No 
trace of his actual residence remains, nor is it prob- 
able that we shall ever know exactly where ' Glorious 
John ' had his Fleet Street habitat. Neither is it 
very satisfactorily proved that the house in Fetter 
Lane (No. 16), traditionally assigned to him, was ever, 
in reality, occupied by the poet. 

This house, adjoining Fleur-de-Lys Court, was de- 
molished in 1887, but a print is given of it in Wilkin- 
son's Londina Illustrata, and it bore on its front an 
old tablet on which appeared this inscription : — 

HERE LIV'D 

JOHN DRYDEN 

YE POET 

Bom 1 63 1 — Died 1700. 
Glorious John ! 

It is not known by whom this was set up. Its 
presence would seem to suggest that Dryden may 
perhaps have lodged temporarily here, for there is no 
record, either in the pages of his biography or in the 
Rate Books, of his ever having owned the house. 

A contemporary writer, Thomas Otway, who made 
a solitary appearance as an actor at the Dorset Garden 
Theatre in Salisbury Court in 1672, is said — though I 
cannot vouch for the fact — to have passed some years 
of his not very reputable life in a house facing that 
assigned to Dryden in Fetter Lane ; and this fact, 
together with a story connected with it, has been re- 
garded as some proof of Dryden's residence here. 

A story is a story, so I will give the one referred to. 
One day Otway called, about breakfast-time, on Dryden, 
in Fetter Lane, but was told he was breakfasting with 
Lord Pembroke. The next morning he called again, 
and this time was informed that his brother-poet was 

303 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

taking his matutinal meal with the Duke of Bucking- 
ham. " The Devil he is," exclaimed Otway, and taking 
up a piece of chalk, he wrote over his rival's door : — 

" Here lives Dryden, a poet and a wit." 
Dryden, on his return, saw theline, and under it wrote: — 

" This was written by Otway, opposit." 

He then told his servant to desire Otway's company 
at breakfast for the following morning. When the 
latter arrived, he immediately saw the additional 
line added to his, and, full of envy at his friend's 
better fortune and noble friends, took it in high dudgeon, 
and turning on his heel, told Dryden he could keep 
his wit and his breakfast to himself. This is so point- 
less a story that, had it not been handed down and 
repeated, one would hesitate to give it credence. Why 
Otway, smarting under envy and disappointment, 
should have written the original line, or why Dryden, 
who with a little thought might have made a good 
rhyme, should have perpetrated such an astonishingly 
bad one, are among the mysteries 

Before leaving the seventeenth century and its 
poets (Rowe, by the bye, was a student at the Middle 
Temple in 1689),^ we must not forget that Richard 
Baxter was a frequent preacher and lecturer in the 
old church of St. Dunstan's, and also in Fetter Lane, 
at a meeting-house near Neville's Court. 

In the Domestic State Papers, and other early records, 
there are notices of various people living in Fleet Street 
and its neighbourhood who cannot be termed illustrious 
in any way, but who should be noted here. For 
instance, in 1549, we find a confirmation, by the King, 

^ So were Selden and Clarendon and Wycherley.J''Selden died Jn 
Whitefriars. 

304 



FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN 

of a lease of certain lands and tenements in Chancery 
Lane abutting on the Rolls Estate, from Richard 
Sampson, Bishop of Chichester, to the Guild and 
Fraternity of St. Mary, and St. Dunstan's, Fleet Street. 
In 1580, one Thomas Crofte is found writing to George 
Mydelmore, his brother-in-law, " at the signe of the 
Bishope in Fleete Streete," and ten years earlier one 
Francis Alford ismentionedasresidingin Salisbury Court. 

About this period Fleet Street seems to have been 
much affected by papists, one of whom was a certain 
Dr. Johnson, for in 1587 we read of information being 
given of priests and recusants residing in Vaudrey's 
lodging at the ' Mermaid ' ; while a letter from the 
celebrated Robert Parsons to Father Swinborn was 
directed to be left at the house of James Taylor, a 
Roman Catholic, " against the Conduit in Fleet Street," 
in 1592. Many papists resided, too, at this period 
in Chancery Lane, and among other residents there are 
mentioned, in 1592-94, Sir Dennis Rowghane and Dr. 
Good. 

It was in Fleet Street, "over a haberdasher's," that 
the mother of Felton, the murderer of the Duke of 
Buckingham, was living in 1628. It would appear 
that Felton had been seen at the Windmill Tavern 
in Shoe Lane a few weeks before he called on his parent 
and asked for money ; not obtaining any, however, 
he intimated his determination to go to Portsmouth 
to get his arrears of pay. That his real object had 
then been decided upon is, to some extent, proved 
by the fact that before departing " he went to 
the church which stood at that time by the Conduit 
in Fleet Street, and left his name to be prayed for 
at next Sunday's service as a man disordered and dis- 
contented in mind." ^ 

^ Forster's Life of Eliot, vol. ii. p, 165. 
U 805 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

At a rather later date (1637), we find Thomas Peirce, 
a tailor, living in White Hart Court, Fleet Street, and 
John Power residing in White Lion Court in the same 
thoroughfare. Coming to the times of Charles ii., there 
is an entry in the Domestic State Papers relative to 
a " Warrant to Francis Rogers, to search the house of 

Carey, goldsmith ' at the Cock, Fleet Street,' 

for certain tapestry, etc., belonging to persons attainted 
for the murder of the late king, and to make an inventory 
of same." 

Other entries have a different interest. Thus, the 
following gives us an insight into the relative rents of 
premises during Cromwell's day : Thos. Dunn, registrar 
for receiving appearances in the City of London, writes 
to the Lord Protector and Council, in 1656, and states 
that he " cannot find a suitable house for the purpose, 
in Fleet Street, under £60 ; another in the same 
thoroughfare with but two or three rooms is let, he 
says, at £52, and one in Dorset Court is offered at £70, 
which he thinks too high a rent. 

Yet another entry tells us that the murderers of 
Sir Richard Sandford are, in 1675, ordered to be 
executed on two gibbets in Fleet Street " over against 
Whitefrairs, where they committed the crime." 

At about this period we find another notable person, 
whose name has survived the furious envy of his foes, 
'Praise-God' Barebone, carrying on business as a leather- 
seller in Fleet Street. In the Domestic State Papers he 
is called ' Prayse Barbon,' but there is no mistaking 
his identity, and we know, from other sources, that he 
was the owner of a house having for sign the ' Lock 
and Key,' in the parish of St. Dunstan's, which was let 
to a family named Speight. It was burned in the Great 
Fire, and was rebuilt by ' Barbon ' whose son, by the 
bye, was that ' Barbon the great builder ' who was 
306 




)1,1J lh)L.'>K.s KN Mlir NAKli, SlllKI'. l.AM-.. 



To face />agc 307. 



FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN 

responsible for so many new erections here and in other 
parts of London.^ 

A still more notable name is that of General Monk,^ 
who, in 1659, is recorded, in a letter addressed to Lady 
Rachel Vaughan (afterwards Russell), as having " sent 
directions for his old lodging to be taken up for him in 
Fleet Street, near the Conduit " ; while Sir Symonds 
D'Ewes, who wrote that valuable parliamentary diary, 
also had lodgings near Inner Temple Gate, as recorded 
in his journals. 

Then there was Bulstrode Whitelocke, known for his 
annals of the reigns in which he lived and his services 
as an Ambassador to Sweden and elsewhere, who was 
born in the house of his great-uncle Sir George Croke, 
in Fleet Street, and baptized at St. Dunstan's on 
Aug. 19, 1605 ; Lady Theodosia Tresham, the wife 
of Sir William Tresham, who is recorded as living in 
Fleet Street in 1639 ; and Sir John Baker, Bart.,^ who 
was residing next the Horn Tavern, in the same thorough- 
fare, in the following year ; while Catherine Philips, 
' the matchless Orinda,' to whom Jeremy Taylor 
addressed his Discourse on Friendship, died in Fleet 
Street on June 22, 1664. Nor must I forget to mention 
that Thomas Beniere, a sculptor of much industry 
if not of a marked amount of genius, lived in a house 
near Fleet Ditch, and died there in 1693. 

The references to Fleet Street during the seventeenth 
century which are to be found in the pages of Pepys 
and Evelyn need not be set down here, as they are 

^ This house was in Fetter Lane, and Barebone paid ^^40 a year 
for it. 

2 The eighteenth Earl of Oxford, who was living in Fleet Street 
about the year 1624, was committed to the Tower for conniving at the 
escape of the Earl of Berkshire's daughter from an attempted forced 
marriage with ' Kit Villiers,' Buckingham's brother. 

* He was buried in St. Bride's. 

307 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

chiefly connected (especially in the case of the former) 
with the various taverns in the thoroughfare, which 
are dealt with in another chapter ; although when, 
under date of July 7, 1668, Pepys remarks that " we 
are fain to go round by Newgate, because of Fleet Bridge 
being under building," he indirectly informs us of one of 
the many changes then taking place in this part of London. 
In Luttrell's Diary, however, such entries as ap- 
pertain to Fleet Street are often of particular interest. 
Several have already been given, in other chapters, but 
here are a few more, short and succinct, as becomes the 
legal hand that penned them : — 

1682, March. " The 2nd, in the morning early, 
a fire broke out in the back part of the 
Queen's Head Tavern, by Templebar, 
but was mastered in a little time, so that 
it consumed only the back part." 

1684, Dec. 3, " was a waterman killed in Fleet- 
street, near Serjeants' Inn." 
„ " Mr. Bramston hath lately killed one 
Piercy Wiseman esq. in Fetter Lane ; 
and the next two or three nights was one 
or two killed each night." 
,, Dec. 17, " one John Hutchins, who killed 
the waterman in Fleetstreet, was hang'd 
on a gibbet erected near the place." 

Coming to the eighteenth century, we are over- 
whelmed almost by the numbers of illustrious men 
whose presence once graced Fleet Street. The prox- 
imity in Shire Lane, close by, of the Trumpet 
Tavern, where the Kit-Kat Club once held its meetings, 
would be alone sufficient to account for such names as 
those of Swift and Steele, and Garth and Addison, 
among so many others. Addison, to begin with him, was 
808 



FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN 

also intimately associated with the Devil Tavern 
and the Temple, where his gentle, dignified presence 
was so often to be seen ; and what name can be more 
closely connected with his than that of his immortal 
creation, Sir Roger de Coverley ? Sir Roger knew all 
these haunts well enough — which reminds me of a 
passage in Pendennis (Thackeray, too, you remember, 
once had chambers in 10 Crown Office Row), coming in 
here not inaptly : — 

' ' Sir Roger de Coverley walking in the Temple Gardens 
and discussing with Mr. Spectator about the beauties 
in hoops and patches who are sauntering over the grass, 
is just as lively a figure to me as old Samuel Johnson 
rolling through the fog with the Scotch gentleman 
at his heels, on their way to Dr. Goldsmith's in Brick 
Court, or Harry Fielding, with inked rufiles and a wet 
towel round his head, dashing off articles for the 
Covent Garden Journal, while the printer's boy is 
asleep in the passage." ^ 

Where was Fielding doing this, you ask ? In the 
chambers he had, close by, in Pump Court, what time 
he was a student at the Middle Temple,^ and before 
Tom Jones had created a new form in fiction, or 
Amelia had kept even unsympathetic old Johnson 
out of his bed, with fascination, in his own despite. 
And Fielding's great rival, Richardson, who was thought 
to be a finer writer ; to be one of the immortals — 
and who reads Clarissa or Grandison to-day ? — Richard- 
son is another of those great figures with which Fleet 
Street is associated. For Richardson lived, and had 
his printing-house, and wrote his epistolary novels, in 

^ Vol. ii. chap. viii. 

^ There is a tradition that Fielding once lived in Beaufort Build- 
ings, Strand, but I "cannot substantiate the fact ; although we know 
that Aaron Hill did. 

309 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Salisbury Court, now become Salisbury Square, and 
lying in the very heart of journalism and printing- 
presses, and where we have already met with him 
in another chapter, before he went to live his last 
years and to die at Parson's Green. We don't hear 
of his frequenting taverns or coffee-houses. His de- 
light was to sit, surrounded by a fair auditory, reading 
those lachrymose passages that so delighted his senti- 
mental worshippers. Hoav he would have rejoiced 
in seeing Mrs. Barbauld kiss the inkhorn with the 
contents of which he had caused so many hearts to 
beat and so many tears to flow. 

No one is so closely identified with that part of 
London with which we are here concerned as Dr. 
Johnson, and as such something must be said, at 
large, about his connection with it : — 

In 1748, Johnson came to 17 Gough Square, more 
closelyi identified with his personality and writings than 
any of his homes. And here was, indeed, a veritable 
literary workshop. The garret where the inception of 
the Rambler took place, and whence, after years of pain- 
ful toil and dogged persistence, the great Dictionary 
presently emerged triumphant, may still be seen. 
Boswell tells us that, on one occasion, Johnson pro- 
posed to Dr. Burney that he should go up with him to 
his attic. Arrived there, the historian of music found 
five or six Greek folios, a deal writing-desk, and a 
chair and a half. The guest being provided with the 
whole seat, the ponderous host balanced himself on 
the other, which had but three legs and one arm. At 
a later date Carlyle made an expedition to Gough 
Square, and " found with difficulty the house in which 
the Dictionary was composed," and where, by the bye, 
Mrs. Johnson had died in 1752, a circumstance glanced 
at in the famous letter to Lord Chesterfield, in which 
810 



FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN 

the writer says that the praise the Vainqueur du Monde 
had bestowed on the Dictionary was useless, for " he 
was alone, and could not impart it." 

In March 1759 Johnson flitted again, this time to 
Staple Inn, as he writes to Miss Lucy Porter, adding : " I 
am going to publish a little story-book, which I will 
send you when it is out." 

The " little story-book " was nothing less than 
Rasselas, which was written in the evenings of a fort- 
night, to pay the funeral expenses of Johnson's mother. 
The sojourn in Staple Inn was not a long one, and Gray's 
Inn and chambers in Inner Temple Lane were its im- 
mediate successors. The latter did not prove inspiring, 
however, and Murphy even speaks of Johnson living 
here in total idleness ; the point of which remark is 
accentuated by the fact that on one occasion, a friend 
having called to write a letter in Johnson's room, found 
him unprovided with pen, ink, or paper. 

Actual want, however, soon caused Johnson to over- 
come his natural inclination to idleness, and in 1763 
we find Boswell paying a visit to Inner Temple Lane 
(to-day superseded by Johnson's Buildings), and find- 
ing a number of good books, " but very dusty and in 
great confusion," and the floor " strewed with manu- 
script leaves in Johnson's own handwriting," which the 
worthy Boswell tells us he " beheld with a degree 
of veneration, supposing they might perhaps contain 
portions of the Rambler or of Rasselas. ^^ 

It was here that Johnson was also visited by Mme 
de Boufflers in company with Beauclerk, and here 
occurred the incident at the close of the visit when 
Johnson, remembering that he had allowed his fair 
acquaintance to depart without escorting her to her 
carriage, rushed down the stairs. Overtaking her 
and Beauclerk before they had gained the Temple Gate, 

311 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

he brushed past the latter, and seizing the lady's hand, 
conducted her to her coach. 

Johnson apparently lived for about two years in 
the Temple, and in 1765 he removed to 7 Johnson's 
Court, Fleet Street, where he remained for eleven years. 
Here he brought out a new edition of the Dictionary, 
and published his Shakespeare and his Journey to the 
Hebrides. One wonders whether the name of the court 
attracted him, for it wasnot,as is so frequently supposed, 
named after him, although, when in the North, he 
playfully described himself as " Johnson of that Ilk." 

On leaving Johnson's Court, Johnson took up his 
residence at 8 Bolt Court, and here he remained during 
the rest of his life. On April 3, 1776, Boswell paid his 
first visit to the Doctor's new abode, and found him 
*' very busy putting his books in order ; and as they 
were generally very old ones, clouds of dust were 
flying around him. He had on a pair of large gloves 
such as hedgers use," and his appearance put his 
future biographer in mind of his uncle's description of 
him : " A robust genius, born to grapple with whole 
libraries." 

Nor are Johnson's friends hardly less associated with 
Fleet Street than the great man around whom they 
clustered. Boswell went wherever his hero went, and 
he even removed from Downing Street to chambers 
in what are now Farrar's Buildings, Temple, to be near 
him, although his other London residences were in the 
west : in Half -Moon Street, in Old Bond Street, and 
lastly, in great Portland Street. 

Burke, when a member of the Middle Temple, 
resided at the ' Pope's Head,' over the shop of Jacob 
Robinson, a bookseller and publisher just inside the 
Temple Gateway, and now known as 16 Fleet Street, 
next the famous ' Rainbow.' 
312 



FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN 

Another great literary figure of the period — that of 
Goldsmith — is intimately associated with the Temple 
and with those haunts where Johnson and his circle 
forgathered. From the time when Goldsmith was 
proof-reader to Richardson, in Salisbury Square, to 
the day when he died in Brick Court (which remains 
substantially as it was in his day), his figure was a 
familiar one in Fleet Street ; he might often have been 
met with in the ' Mitre ' or the ' Cheshire Cheese,' or at 
the card club held at the Devil Tavern, and the debat- 
ing club at the 'Robin Hood.' In 1757, letters addressed 
to him were to be left at the Temple Exchange Coffee- 
House, near Temple Bar ; and three years later he took 
up his residence at 6 Wine Office Court, a place for ever 
memorable as having seen the inception and completion 
of the Vicar of Wakefield. Here Johnson first visited 
him, and here he himself glanced through the MS 
of the famous book, and, as he himself told Bos well, 
" saw its merit," and, having gone to a bookseller, sold 
it for sixty pounds. Goldsmith — happy-go-lucky, 
improvident Goldsmith — had then spent his last guinea, 
and was being dunned for his rent. Four years later 
the poet had removed to 2 Garden Court, and later 
went to Gray's Inn ; but when he received the £500 for 
his Good-N atured Man, he returned to the Temple, and 
Brick Court was his last earthly abode. 

Near the Temple Church is the plain stone on which 
is inscribed, " Here lies Oliver Goldsmith," and which is 
known to most of us ; but it is a question whether it 
marks the actual spot where his remains were laid. It 
is, however, in any case, approximately near the place. 

While Johnson was living in Johnson's Court, 
and Goldsmith was in Brick Court, there arrived in 
London a youth with genius written on his unhappy 
brow, but whom Fate had reserved for a tragic end 

313 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

— Thomas Chatterton. A garret in Shoreditch was 
his first lodging in London ; a hardly better room in 
Brooke Street, Holborn, was his second and last ; and 
he enters into these pages in virtue of the fact that 
his body was cast into an unknown pauper's grave in 
the workhouse burial-ground in Shoe Lane. This 
cemetery was eventually done away with when Farring- 
don Market was formed, and, as Howitt phrases it, " the 
tombs and memorials of the deceased disappeared to 
make way for the shambles and cabbage-stalks of the 
living." 

The gentle figure of Cowper must often have been 
seen in Fleet Street, what time the poet had lodgings 
in the Middle Temple, and, later,'t chambers in the 
Inner Temple, where he attempted to commit suicide 
on being forbidden by his family to marry his cousin. 
Like Addison before him, he was used, in these days, to 
frequent Dick's (then called ' Richard's ') Coffee-House. 

Coming to a later day, we meet with Lamb and his 
circle in these hallowed haunts. Elia himself is almost 
as closely identified with this part of London as Johnson 
was : he was born in the Temple (Crown Office Row) in 
1775 ; from 1800 to 1809 he lived at 16 Mitre Court 
Buildings ; and, with a slight break, when he went to 
Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, he was back in 
the Temple, at 4 Inner Temple Lane, where he meant, 
he said, to " live and die." Fate, however, ordained 
otherwise, and in 1817 he left his beloved purlieus, never 
to return as a resident. He has told us so much of 
himself during these days in his essay on the " Old 
Benchers of the Temple," and elsewhere in his works, 
and we know, besides, so much from his letters, that 
there is no necessity to recapitulate here his love for 
Fleet Street and its neighbourhood. 

But I cannot resist giving two extracts from his Essays, 
314 



FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN 

not only because they are bits of Lamb, but also because 
they afford us glimpses of two other interesting person- 
alities — the fine actor, Elliston ; and the little-remem- 
bered one, Dodd. The first is from " Ellistoniana " ; 
the second from " On Some of the Old Actors " — 

" It was my fortune to encounter him [Elliston] 
near St. Dunstan's Church (which, with its punctual 
giants, is now no more than dust and a shadow), on the 
morning of his election to that high office. Grasping 
my hand with a look of significance, he only uttered, 
' Have you heard the news ? ' — then, with another look 
following up the blow, he subjoined, ' I am the future 
Manager of Drury Lane Theatre.' Breathless as he saw 
me, he stayed not for congratulation or reply, but 
mutely stalked away, leaving me to chew upon his new- 
blown dignities at leisure. In fact, nothing could be 
said to it. Expressive silence alone could muse his 
praise. 

" This was in his great style." 

" Dodd was a man of reading,'and left at his death 
a choice collection of old English literature. I should 
judge him to have been a man of wit. I know one 
instance of an impromptu which no length of study 
could have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, 
had seen him one evening in Aguecheek, and, recog- 
nising Dodd the next day in Fleet Street, was irre- 
sistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him 
as the identical knight of the preceding evening with a 
' Save you. Sir Andrew.^ Dodd, not at all disconcerted 
atthis unusual addressfrom a stranger, with a courteous, 
half-rebuking wave of the hand, put him off with an 
Away, fooV " 

Crowded as Fleet Street is in memory — as crowded, 
indeed, as it has always been in fact — one great figure 
towers above the heterogeneous throng ; one person- 

315 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

ality is, as I have before said, more closely connected 
with it than any other — that of Dr. Johnson. And as 
this is the case, I will close this chapter in his company 
and that of his faithful henchman : — 

" It was a delightful day : as we walked to St. 
Clement's Church, I again remarked that Fleet Street 
was the most cheerful scene in the world. ' Fleet Street,' 
said I, ' is in my mind more delightful than Temple.' 

" Johnson. ' Aye, Sir . . . ' " 



316 




»! ^ 



Pi 






\>\<. |(i||\^ii\ -, i|(il ~\' INMIC ll-MI'll'. I \M-: 



To face page 317. 



CHAPTER IX 

FLEET STREET AND THE PRESS 

To-day, publishers have sought different haunts, 
and booksellers are not so greatly represented in Fleet 
Street as in other thoroughfares ; but printers — chiefly 
those concerned in the production of the great news- 
papers whose offices may be said to be as the sands of 
the shore in Fleet Street and its neighbourhood — still 
carry on a tradition which has now been connected 
with the locality for many a year. In the past, indeed, 
Fleet Street was the accepted home of those who 
gained a living by the production of books ; just as it 
was, to a certain extent, the domicile of those engaged 
in their making. The place had a literary flavour. Its 
taverns and coffee-houses had a literary flavour. Its 
most enduring memories are those connected with 
men of letters ; and if it has one tutelary deity, it is 
surely the great and good man who represented the 
familiar and traditional type of the literary character. 
But people who write books, although in the main 
a harmless race and all very well in their way, can 
hardly be considered to attain to the importance — they 
certainly have seldom, if ever, attained to the wealth — 
of those who print and publish ; and this chapter must 
be devoted to the latter. Columbus discovered America; 
but what could he have done had no shipbuilder been 
at hand to enable him to cross the Atlantic ! 

817 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

The various stationers' shops which are to be 
found in Fleet Street are properly the descendants 
of the early booksellers, as we now understand the 
term ; and for this reason. In former days, book- 
sellers were such as hawked about the literary wares 
they had for sale — they were merely itinerant vendors, 
like pedlars ; whereas the stationer was a man who 
kept a shop or stall, in a stationary place ; and as the 
latter frequently sold the materials which went to 
the making of books, as well as the completed article, 
the word stationery came to have its present meaning. 

Formerly, too, book selling and publishing were 
carried on together far more than is the case to-day, 
when, although we have plenty of instances where a 
bookseller publishes works, the rule is for the two 
industries to be separate. Printing, obviously, pre- 
ceded both ; and in early times the printer published 
and sold books, as did Caxton at Westminster and 
as did Wynkyn de Worde, who set up his press in 
Fleet Street, " in parochia Sancte Brigide," and is 
the father of printing in this locality. He came 
hither about the year 1500, for two years later his 
Ordynarye of Crysten Men was issued at " the 
sygne of the sonne in the flete strete." Where- 
abouts his premises actually were is not known, 
although, as The Assemble of Foules was printed and 
published by him " at the sygne of the sonne, agaynste 
the Condyte," it seems clear that his press must have 
been near Shoe Lane, as we know the Conduit stood 
in the centre of Fleet Street, practically opposite 
the lane. He apparently had his private house at 
the sign of the ' Falcon,' perpetuated by Falcon Court ; 
and it is interesting to remember that Gorboduc, 
the earliest English tragedy, was " imprynted in Flete 
strete, at the sign of the Faucon," by William Griffith, 
318 



FLEET STREET AND THE PRESS 

in 1565, and was sold at his shop in St. Dunstan's 
Churchyard. 

A contemporary of de Worde's, and, Hke him, a 
pupil of Caxton, Richard Pynson was another early 
Fleet Street printer, and a very prolific one, for he is 
said to have produced no fewer than two hundred 
and fifteen books in this thoroughfare alone. The 
first issued by him here was printed, in 1493, " by 
me Richarde Pynson at the Temple-barre of London," 
and this. Noble tells us, was the first book printed in 
Fleet Street. Pynson seems to have occupied various 
places in the thoroughfare. In 1494, his imprint 
bears the words : " withoute the Temple Barre " ; 
in 1503, he prints The Imytacion of Criste, in Fleet 
Street " at the sygne of the George," and in 1526 
The Pylgrimage of Perfection was issued " in Flete 
Strete besyde Saynt Dunstan's Churche." 

At this time Robert Redman had set up as a printer, 
and incidentally annexed Pynson's trade-mark, issu- 
ing books both from the George without Temple 
Bar, which had been Pynson's house, and later at the 
George by St. Dunstan's Church. R is probable that 
an agreement had been come to between the rivals, 
as otherwise Redman's imprint is mysterious. 

Robert Coplande, an assistant at one time of de 
Worde's, printed books at the sign of the ' Rose Gar- 
lande in Flete Strete,' where he was succeeded by 
William Coplande, who, besides being a noted typo- 
grapher, was a benefactor to Bridewell, and is supposed 
to have died in 1569. J. Hugh Jackson is found 
printing George Wapul's very rare comedy. The Tyde 
taryeth no Man, in 1576, " in Fleete Streete beneath the 
Conduite, at the signe of ' Seynt John Evangelist ; ' " i 

1 There are copies of this rarity in the British Museum and the Duke 
of Devonshire's library. 

319 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

and Richard Bancks had one of several printing-presses, 
at the sign of the ' Whyte Hart ' notable as being the 
place where, in 1600, Thomas Fisher produced the first 
edition of Shakespeare's Midsummer NigMs Dream. 
Laurence Andrewe reprinted Caxton's Mirroiir of the 
Worlde, at "the Golden Crosse by Flete Bridge," and 
Thomas Berthelet, printer to the King, had his head- 
quarters " neere to the Condite at ye signe of the 
Lucreece." Machyn thus records his burial in the 
autumn of 1555, although the place of his interment 
is not known : — 

" The sam day at after-none was bered mister 
Berthelett sqwyre and prynter unto Kyng Henry ; and 
was bered with pennon and cote-armour, and iiij dosen of 
skochyons and ij whytt branchys and iiij gylt candyll- 
stykes, and mony prestes and clarkes, and mony 
mornars, and all the craftes of prynters, boke-sellers, 
and all stassy oners." 

Berthelet was evidently a man of importance in his 
day. Indeed, we find him employing, on occasion, other 
printers to produce the works he published — notably in 
the case of Tyndale's Bible, which was printed for him 
by Redman, in 1540, and Taverner's translation of the 
Bible, which was produced to his order by John Byddell 
in the previous year. This Byddell was sometimes 
called Bedell, and sometimes — though why I do not 
know — Salisbury. 1 He had his headquarters first at 
the sign of " Our Ladye of Pitye, near Flete Bridge," 
and later at the " Sun neere the Conduit," probably 
the house which de Worde had once occupied. 

Other sixteenth-century printers include William 
Rastell, " at the signe of the Star in Sayncte Bridy's 
Churchyarde " ; Richard Tottill or Tottel, at the ' Hand 
and Star,' now No. 7 Fleet Street ; Thomas Marsh, 

^ See Noble, Memorials of Temple Bar. 
820 



FLEET STREET AND THE PRESS 

who printed Stow's Summary of English Chronicles at 
the ' Prince's Amies,' in Fleet Street, in 1567 ; Whit- 
church, another tenant of the ' Sun ' ; Charles Yets weirt, 
who is known to have had a press in the Middle Temple 
Gate in 1594 ; and Humphrey Hooper, who in 1597 
sold the first edition of Bacon's Essays " at the black 
Besse in Chancery Lane." What would he have said 
had he known that in the year of grace 1911 a copy of 
this book would be bought for £1950, the sum Mr. 
Quaritch gave for it in the Huth Sale ! 

In the following century, the splendid lead thus 
given by earlier printers in Fleet Street, was well 
maintained. Thus we find John Jaggard, followed 
by a number of lesser-known printers and booksellers, 
occupying the ' Hand and Star,' once the press of 
Tottill ; and John Smethwicke, described as a stationer 
" under the diall " of St. Dunstan's. Smethwicke and 
Jaggard are both notable for their connection with 
the early production of Shakespeare's plays. Another 
well - known publisher of this period was Richard 
Marriot, whose first premises were at the King's Head 
Tavern until he moved to St. Dunstan's Churchyard. 
He is chiefly remembered as the publisher of Walton's 
Angler and Butler's Hiidibras, concerning which latter 
work Noble gives the following curious advertisement 
from the Public Intelligence for Dec. 23, 1662 : — 

" There is stolen abroad a most false, imperfect 
copy of a poem called Hudibras, without name either of 
printer or bookseller, as fit for so lame and spurious an 
impression. The true and perfect edition, printed by 
the author's original, is sold by Richard Marriot, under 
St. Dunstan's church, in Fleet Street ; that other 
nameless impression is a cheat, and will but abuse the 
buyer as well as the author, whose poem deserves to 
have fallen into better hands." 

X 821 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

We remember that Pynson's house was known as 
the ' George ' ; when, then, we find Thomas Dring, who 
was one of the pubHshers of Howell's Londinopolis, 
issuing books in 1655 from the ' George ' near Clifford's 
Inn, I assume that the two places were identical ; and if 
so, this is one out of several instances where a book- 
seller's or printer's premises have been kept in the same 
business for a lengthy period. A contemporary of Dring's 
was John Starkey, who brought out Shadweli's Plays 
at the ' Mitre ' between the two Temple gateways, and 
who took much interest in parochial affairs, being on 
the Common Council of the Ward in 1681. 

Other printers and publishers of this period were 
Matthias Walker, " under St. Dunstan's Church," who, 
together with others, published Milton's Paradise Lost 
in 1667 ; Abel Roper, " at the Black Boy " opposite 
the church, the printer of the Postboy news-sheet ; and 
Dan IMajor who, with Samuel Lee, brought out the Little 
London Directory of 1677 at the ' Flying Horse ' in 
Fleet Street ; Henry Seile, the publisher of Aulicus 
Coquinarice, in 1650, " over against St. Dunstan's 
Church " ; and M. Wotton, who published Rushworth's 
Collections, and had his house at " the ' Three Pigeons ' 
against the Inner Temple Gate." 

The title pages of seventeenth-century books reveal 
the names of many other publishers and printers con- 
nected with Fleet Street — for instance, Cowley's Works, 
1684, were "to be sold by Charles Harper, at the 
Flower de Luce, over against St. Dunstan's Church " ; 
the Cabala was " printed by G. Bedell and T. Collins, 
and are to be sold at their shop at the Middle Temple 
Gate," in 1663 ; The Death of Charles I. Lamented, by 
W.Langley, was issued by Sym Gape, "next to Hercules' 
Pillars in Fleet Street," in 1660. The list might be 
extended, of course, but I think we can see, from the 
322 



FLEET STREET AND THE PRESS 

names given, that in the seventeenth century Fleet 
Street was fully as active in the matter of ' bookishness ' 
as it was in earlier days. 

But its great period in this respect was the 
eighteenth century. That wonderful time, when so 
much was written of permanent value, and also so 
much of merely ephemeral importance, gave plenty of 
work to printers and publishers. Authors began to 
be ' kept ' by these ' middlemen ' of literature ; Grub 
Street came into being ; patrons were sought for with 
avidity, and many a fulsome dedication has been paid 
for by a rich man's guineas. One remembers Johnson 
as he dismally tells how 

" Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol " 

assail the miserable scholar's sordid existence. Natur- 
ally, the result of such a blood-thirsty clinging to 
literature multiplied publishers and booksellers, and 
many of these found their natural headquarters in 
Fleet Street, and helped to carry on the now ancient 
literary traditions of that thoroughfare. 

One or two of these stand out from the rest, be- 
cause of their own eminence or because of their con- 
nection with some author who was lucky enough to 
catch the taste of the town. Of these was Jacob 
Tonson, who, in 1670, had been apprenticed to Thomas 
Basset, a then well-known bookseller of Fleet Street. 
Tonson set up for himself about ten years later, and 
from the ' Judge's Head,' at the Fleet Street end 
of Chancery Lane, he published many of Dryden's 
works from 1681 to 1693. A year later, he removed 
to near the gateway of the Inner Temple, carrying 
his sign of the 'Judge's Head' with him, and subse- 
quently migrated to the Strand where Andrew Millar 
succeeded him, and elsewhere. The number of books 

323 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

bearing Tonson's imprint seems endless ; indeed, al- 
though there were plenty of other well-known publishers 
at this period, he appears to have had the lion's share 
of the business — a success that no one will grudge the 
man who first made Paradise Lost popular, and helped 
to reveal the splendours of Shakespeare's genius. 

A man with a very different reputation to that 
enjoyed by Tonson, was Edmund Curll, whose shop was 
known by the sign of the ' Dial and Bible,' close to 
St. Dunstan's Church, where he was fined for selling 
indecent literature, for which he was placed in the 
pillory at Charing Cross, besides undergoing the addi- 
tional ignominy, for another lapse of taste, of being 
tossed in a blanket by the boys of Westminster School. 
Pope, who on other counts had no reason to love the 
publisher, speaks ironically of " Curll's chaste press." 
The quarrel between the two has no little element of 
mystery about it. It need not detain us except for 
the fact that a meeting between them, at which Curll 
said he had been half poisoned, took place, on a memor- 
able occasion, at the Swan Tavern in Fleet Street. 

Curll was a man who was continually getting into 
trouble, and the annals of contemporary bookselling are 
full of his misdemeanours : breaches of privileges, 
offences against taste, more serious offences against 
morals. Lideed, he was so unfavourably notorious 
in the last respect that the selling of offensive books 
was termed at the time the " Sin of Curllicism." 
Curwen ^ quotes a very strong article which appeared 
in Mist's Weekly Journal for April 5, 1718, in the 
course of which the writer terms Curll " a contempt- 
ible wretch a thousand ways ; he is odious in his 
person, scandalous in his fame," and he adds : " more 
beastly, insufferable books have been published by 

^ Histovy of Booksellers. 
324 



■ FLEET STREET AND THE PRESS 

this one offender than in thirty years before by all the 
nation." A man who has been thus spoken of, and 
who has, besides, been damned to everlasting fame in 
the Dunciad, may well claim a respite from further 
vituperation. 

The name of Pope brings us conveniently to his 
well-known publisher, Bernard Lintot, who occupied 
a shop known as the ' Cross Keys,' between the Temple 
gates, next door to Nando's Coffee-House, where he 
began business in the year 1700. From here Lintot 
issued, during the years 1715 to 1728, his splendid 
subscription edition of Pope's translation of the Iliad 
and the Odyssey. There was a building close by 
his premises, called the ' Post House,' in the Middle 
Temple Gate, and here Lintot was publishing in 1701, 
probably during alterations at the ' Cross Keys,' for 
later (in 1709) I find E. Sanger, in conjunction with 
Curll and J. Pemberton, at the ' Golden Buck,' near 
St. Dimstan's, issuing, from the ' Post House,' White- 
locke's Memorials of State. 

Another well -remembered publisher of this period 
was Lawton Gilliver "at Homer's Head, against St. 
Dunstan's Church." He it was who brought out the 
first authentic edition of the Dunciad, in 1729, which 
contains a long letter addressed to the publisher, by 
William Cleland, dated Dec. 22, 1728. 

Not so well known as those I have mentioned 
was Benjamin Tooke, whose premises were at the 
Middle Temple Gate, where he was succeeded by 
Benjamin Motte, famous as having had a hand in 
making Gulliver^s Travels known to the world. Motte 
was in turn succeeded by Charles Bathurst in 1738. 
Motte and Bathurst were related, having each married 
a daughter of the Rev. Thomas Brian, once head- 
master of Harrow. 

825 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

Other lesser-known eighteenth-century publishers 
and booksellers were Thomas Wotton, who succeeded 
a certain Francis Tyton at the ' Three Daggers,' 
near the Inner Temple Gate, and who published a 
Baronetage from this house ; George Hawkins, who 
occupied the ' Milton's Head,' between the Temple 
Gates, and was treasurer of the Stationers' Company 
in 1766 ; Charles Corbet, at ' Addison's Head,' who 
became a baronet on the death of his kinsman Sir 
Richard Corbet in 1744 ; and Benjamin White, to 
whom Payne, afterwards of Pall Mall, was once manager, 
of ' Horace's Head ' in Fleet Street, whence he began 
publishing, ijiter alia, Malcolm's Londinum Redivivum 
in 1802. 

The last named brings us to the nineteenth 
century ; for it does not seem necessary to seek out 
the names of the many obscure members of the trade 
who once lived in Fleet Street during the days of the 
Georges. But the nineteenth century, although pro- 
ducing plenty of signs of activity in the production of 
books, and especially of newspapers, does not present 
us with such a large field for investigation with regard 
to publishers or booksellers. Certainly, William Wood- 
fall, the brother of the better-known Henry Sampson 
Woodfall, whose name will endure as long as the 
Letters of Junius are remembered, had a printing- 
press at 82 Dorset Street, Salisbury Square, and other 
members of the family appear to have been connected 
with this locality ; while Mr. Henry Butterworth, who 
died in 1860, and was then the oldest publisher in 
business, carried on the tradition associated with No. 7 
Fleet Street, as a sort of lineal descendant of Richard 
Tottill, a tradition still, to some extent, enduring in 
the present proprietors of the business, Messrs. Shaw 
& Sons, whose chief premises are in Fetter Lane. 
326 



FLEET STREET AND THE PRESS 

But if we are not able to produce a great number 
of nineteenth-century publishers as being connected 
with Fleet Street, that thoroughfare and that century 
can both boast of one whose name stands second to 
nobody's in this direction of human endeavour ; for 
John Murray (or MacMurray, as the name was originally 
spelt), having bought the stock and goodwill of William 
Sandley, who had turned banker, began at the 
' Falcon,' otherwise No. 32 Fleet Street, that remark- 
able and prosperous career which has culminated in 
the great publishing house of Murray. In Smiles' book 
on the Murray s will be found an exhaustive account 
of the inception, by Lieutenant MacMurray, of this 
great firm. What the Murrays (long since moved to 
Albemarle Street) have not published would, it almost 
seems, be easier set down than what they have ; but 
their first three successes are said to have been 
Langhorne's Plutarch, Mitford's Greece, and D'Israeli's 
Curiosities of Literature, all of which were issued from 
32 Fleet Street. 

As was then the custom. No. 32 was also the private 
house of John Murray (he dropped the Mac on buying 
the business, as Scotchmen w^re not popular in the 
eighteenth century), and here, in 1778, was born the 
second John Murray. The elder died in 1793, and his 
son moved to the West End in 1812, when the Fleet 
Street business was purchased by Thomas and George 
Underwood. They, however, failed in 1831, and Mr. 
Samuel Higley (whose father had been Murray's 
manager) took the place, having been previously 
engaged as a medical bookseller at 174 Fleet Street. 
The continuity of the house was, later, kept alive by 
its being in the possession of Mr. George Philip, the 
bookseller. 

Centuries before Murray came here. No. 32 had 

327 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

a bookselling and printing history of great antiquity, 
for it was here that William Griffith had his press, 
from 1561 to 1570 ; so that No. 32 Fleet Street, like 
No. 7, can boast of an ancestry equal to that of any 
business house in London. 

If the nineteenth century cannot rival the preced- 
ing one in the number of its book publications eman- 
ating from Fleet Street, it, however, far outstrips it in 
its magazines and newspapers. Certainly it can be 
proved that the Gentleman's Magazine was, at least, 
partly printed in Red Lion Court (No. 169 Fleet Street) 
from 1779 to 1781, at the press of Nichols and his sons, 
but the vast majority of its numbers have been printed, 
in our own time, in Whitefriars ; and Charles Knight's 
Penny Magazine, inaugurated in Fleet Street in 1832, 
must have had a sale far exceeding anything the 
Gentleman's Magazine ever dreamed of. 

What comparison, too, can be instituted between 
the exiguous halfpenny news-sheets, which were issued 
three times a week by Parkins of Salisbury Square, 
Read of Whitefriars, and other enterprising eighteenth- 
century publications : the ' Daily Courants,' the ' Post- 
boys,' the official ' Gazettes,' small, badly printed, badly 
edited ; and such journals as the Daily Telegraph, 
the Daily News, the Standard, the Daily Chronicle 
(the observant reader will note the strict impartiality 
of this artfully arranged list !), whose offices are small 
colonies, whose leaders make statesmen quail, whose 
advertisements give food for so much reflection to the 
loiterers outside the office windows or the more earnest 
students who flock the office reading-rooms. 

And besides these leviathans, what an array of 
smaller craft float about this street around them : 
local papers, provincial journals ; scientific, sporting, 
medical news-sheets. As you walk down Fleet Street, 
328 



FLEET STREET AND THE PRESS 

you may see many of them looking out at you from 
ground-floor windows ; but the offices of more are above, 
and, glancing up, you will read their legends in white 
letters, or more dramatically advertised, on every side, 
until you will cease to think of the thoroughfare as 
one of ordinary commerce, but as some great monster 
who is bearing along on its back myriads of parasites, 
who, like the cuttle-fish, are continually making black 
the atmosphere by their inky emissions. At night 
you will feel this literary atmosphere best, perhaps ; 
at night you will get into the skin of Fleet Street, as it 
were — the Fleet Street of George Gissing, the Fleet Street 
of George Augustus Sala,^ the Fleet Street of Dickens, 
the Fleet Street of Johnson ! 

All these newspapers are in a way part and parcel of 
the thoroughfare, just as are all the great men and 
women of the past who have been connected with it. But 
as from among this motley throng one figure (as I have 
said before) emerges triumphant — that of Dr. Johnson — 
so from the rank and file of the journals, one always 
seems to slip to the front, and to stand out as pre- 
eminently the journal of Fleet Street : I mean Punch. 

The history of Punch has been written by an able 
hand ; Punch itself is known throughout all towns, all 
counties, all countries ! Its birthplace was Fleet 
Street ; and at No. 3 Crane Court, where ' Parr's Life 
Pills ' also came into existence, " it first saw the light, 
and here the circumstances matured which led to its 
birth." 2 The double association of 3 Crane Court is 
significant : what Parr's Pills attempted to do for those 
whose bodily ailments needed such cures, so Punch's 
Pills to purge Melancholy did, and do, for the mind and 

1 By the bye, at 122 Fleet Street Temple Bar was first published 
on Dec. i, i860, with Sala as editor. 

2 Mr. Punch : his Origin and Career. 

329 



THE ANNALS OF FLEET STREET 

the spirits. Punch has brightened life to such an extent, 
it has on so many occasions shown such a wise prevision 
and such a telhng criticism on events of national im- 
portance, it has been so absolutely free from anything 
that could wound susceptibilities or shock the feelings, 
it has kept up for so many years such a high level of 
genuine wit and humour, that its presence in Fleet 
Street is like a ray of sunshine ; and if in the old days, 
when its offices were at the corner of Bouverie Street 
(they are close by still), you met, on a murky November 
day, say, everybody with long faces and pursed-up lips, 
when you came by this window (exhibiting some of Mr. 
Punch's latest wares — or some of his oldest — it didn't 
matter) you were always sure of finding a group of 
delighted loiterers, who, in spite of cold, in spite of fog, 
— in spite of deadlier cares, perhaps, — were electrified, 
for the nonce, into a state of happy forgetfulness of 
everything except of one of Punch's ' latest ' or of one 
of Punch's perennial ' good ones.' 

As we have to take our leave of Fleet Street some- 
where, I think that we can do it no better than in 
the contemplation of such innocent happiness. 



330 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abbot, Dr., 221. 

Abraham, H. R., 163. 

Addison, Joseph, 248, 252, 254, 

264, 268, 281, 308. 
' Addison's Head,' the, 326. 
Adley, William, 63. 
Ainger, Alfred, 190, 224. 
Albert Club, 81. 
Allanson, Mary, 75 
Allen, Edmund, 81. 
Allington, Richard, 102. 
Alsatia, 47, 48, 50, 51-56, i6g, 170. 
Amours, Prince d', 162. 
Anderton's Hotel, 32, 71, 279. 
Andrewe, Laurence, 320. 
Angel and Crown Tavern, 272. 
Anne, Queen, 62. 
Antigallican Tavern, 272. 
Antrous, William, 153. 
Apollo Club, 243-251. 
Apollo Court, no, 252, 258. 
Appleby, John, 12. 
Arbuthnot, Dr., 267. 
Armstrong, Sir Thomas, 126, 127. 
Ashley, Sir Anthony, 151. 
Ashmole, Elias, 40, 112, 165. 
Atie, Sir Arthur, 112. 
Atterbury, Dr., 103. 
Augusta, I, 25. 
Auriol, 205, 206. 
Austin Friars, 75. 
Auverne, Anketill de, 6. 
Auverne, Stephen de, 4. 

Backwell, Edward, 134, 136, 143. 
Bacon, Sir George, 65. 
Bacon, Sir N., 203. 
Bagford, John, 92. 



Baker, Henry, 98. 

Baker, Sir H., 230. 

Baker, Sir John, 280, 307. 

Bamfield, Edward, 23. 

Bancks, Richard, 320. 

Bangor, Bishop of, 73, 74. 

Bangor Court, 74. 

Bangor Inn, 73, 74. 

Banister, John, 22. 

Barber, 79. 

Barbour, Walter le, 115. 

Barcbone, Dr., 15. 

Barebone, Nicholas, 86, 87, 104. 

Barcbone, ' Praise-God,' 75, 86, 

91, 306. 
Barking, Richard de, 191. 
Barkstead, Sir John, 74. 
Barrington, Daines, 183, 217. 
Barrymore, Lord, 272. 
Baset, John, 17. 
Basset, Thomas, 20. 
Bassett, Robert, 200. 
Bates, Dr., 204. 
Baxter, Richard, 92, 204, 304. 
Bayne, Ralph, 192, ig8. 
Beadle, Thomas, 75. 
Beardwell, John, 240. 
Beauclerk, 172, 215, 311. 
Becket, James, 32. 
Beckford, Richard, 7. 
Bedford, Earl of, 136. 
Bedford, Paul, 273. 
Bedwell, G., 159. 
Bell Savage Tavern, 253, 326. 
Bell Tavern, no. 
Bell Yard, no. 
Bellayes, Lord, 14. 
Beniere, Thomas, 307. 

333 



INDEX 



Ben Jonson's Court, 76. 

Bennett, John, 31. 

Benson, Christopher, 190. 

Bentley, 74. 

Berkeley, Lord, 82. 

Berthelett, 320. 

Bethlehem Hospital, 68. 

Betterton, 61, 62. 

Birch, Dr., 100. 

Birtwhistle, Daniel, 63. 

Bishop of Sarum, the, 17. 

'Black Bull,' the, 92. 

Black Horse Alley, 71. 

Black Horse Tavern, 272, 273. 

' Black Lion,' the, 54, 288. 

' Black Moor's Head,' the, 35. 

Blackfriars, 3, 64, 65. 

Blackstone, Sir William, 106, 165, 

172. 
Blair, Dr., 41, 236. 
Blanchard, Robert, 134, 135, 143- 
Blencowe, Justice, 155. 
' Blew Boar and Green Tree,' 

the, 23. 
Blewit, 55. 

Blount, Sir Henry, 253. 
Blow, Dr., 223. 
Boar's Head Tavern, 287, 288. 
' Bodega,' the, 256. 
Bokebyndere, Dionsia le, 17. 
Bolt Court, 22, 35, 78-83, 312. 
Bolt-in-Tun Tavern, 33, 53, 289. 
Bolton, Duke of, 136. 
Bond, Thomas, 12. 
Boswell Court, iii, 118, 272. 
Boswell, James, 41, 42, 45, 78, 

79, 80, 83, 172, 179, 180, 275, 

281, 311. 
Boufflers, Madame de, 41, 179, 

180, 311. 
Bouverie Street, 47, 48, 51, 53. 
Bowling Pin Alley, 109. 
Bowyer, 52. 
Boyce, Samuel, 75. 
Boydell, Alderman, 189. 
Bradbury & Evans, 47, 52. 
Bradford, John, 170. 
Bradshaw, Henry, 188. 
Brampton, John de, 207. 
Bramston, Sir John, 147. 
Brasbridge, Joseph, 34. 
Brayley, 194. 
Bream's Buildings, 108. 
334 



Brian, Thomas, 325. 

Brick Court, 171, 172, 173, 182, 

187. 313. 
Bride Lane, 2, 37, 63, 64. 
Bridewell, palace of, 3, 10, 27,63- 

Bridge Street, 5, 25, 28, 29, 67 

68, 69. 
Briton, John, 97. 
Briton's Court, 49. 
Brooke Street, 75. 
Browne, Edward, 87. 
Browne, Sir Robert, 120, 169. 
Browne, William, 171. 
Brownrigg, Mrs., 88, 89. 
Bruce, Lord, 102. 
Bucher, Jeremy, 75. 
Buckbridge, Dr., 221. 
Buckhurst, Lord Treasurer, 55, 

170. 
Buckinger, 23. 
Buckingham, Duke of, 199. 
Buke, Henry de, 4. 
Bull Head Court, 96. 
Bullen, Anne, 38, 295. 
Bulstrode, Edward, 200. 
Burke, 20, 165, 275, 281, 312. 
Burnet, 103. 
Burney, 83. 
Bushnell, John, 102. 
Bute, Lord, 257. 
Butler, 103, 150. 
Butterworth, 20. 
Butts, Dr., 48. 
Byddell, John, 32. 

Cadgers' Hall, iii. 
Caesar, family of, 98. 
Campbell, Colin, 102. 
Campbell, Lord Chief Justice, 41, 

180, 185. 
Campeius, 65. 
Campion, 39, 201. 
Canning, 186. 
Cannon, Simon, 240. 
Capell, Edward, 173. 
Carew, Lord, 206. 
Carew, Sir Matthew, 50. 
Carey, Nicholas, 105. 
Carey, Sir George, 106. 
Carey Street, 105, 106, 112. 
Carliel, 51. 
Carlile, Richard, 33, 35. 



INDEX 



Carlyle, Thomas, 84, 310. 

Carter, 33. 

Castlo Tavern, 36, 288. 

Castlemaine, Lady, 136. 

Castree, Anne, 75. 

Catherine of Aragon, 5. 

Cave, 56. 

Cavendish, William, 199. 

Cecil, family of, 98. 

Cecil, Mr. Secretary, 66. 

Cecil, Sir William, 203, 230. 

Champenet, John, 154. 

Chancery Lane, 2, 3, 9, 20, 29, 
32, 35. 36, 43. 47. 90, 91, 93, 
95, 97, 98, 99, 100, loi, 104, 
105, 107, 109, 115, 126, 132, 
133, 149, 151,' 300, 301, 305, 

314- 
Chapman, W., 195. 
Chapone, Mrs., 106. 
Charles i., 125, 199. 
Charles 11., 11, 21, 24, 69, loi, 120, 

125, 127, 136, 140, 158, 159, 

251, 283, 295. 
Charles v.. Emperor, 64. 
Chatterton, 75, 314. 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 297. 
Chauntelere, Roger, 4. 
Cheke, Sir John, 50. 
' Cheshire Cheese,' the, 78, 281, 

282, 283, 284, 285, 313. 
Chicheley, 14. 
Chichester Rents, 93, 105. 
Chifiinch, Tom, 136. 
Child, 7, 21, 40, 132-144, 170, 

204, 242, 251. 
Child's Place, 40. 
' Cicero's Head,' the, 86. 
City Gas Works, 63. 
City of London School, 63. 
Clarendon, Lord, 136. 
Clark, 32. 

Clarke, Mrs., 57, 109. 
Clifford, Robert de, 145. 
Clifford's Inn, 12, 14, 90, 106, 

145-152, 206, 298. 
Clifford's Inn Coffee-House, 195. 
Cobbett, William, 80. 
Cobham, Eleanor, 294. 
Cock Tavern, the, 257, 258, 259. 
Cockayne, 7. 
Cogers' Hall, 63, 292. 
Coke, Sir Edward, 146, 152, 171. 



Coleridge, S. T., 41, 42, 43, 99, 

171, 180, 252, 314. 
Collins, Brush, 250. 
Colman, George, 183. 
Commercial Chronicle, the, 88. 
Concanen, 88. 
' Conduit,' the, 37, 38, 39. 
Congreve, 68, 165, 264, 268, 

269, 281. 
Connel, Dennis, 72. 
Conningstone, Nicholas, 171. 
Cooke, Sir Henry, 106. 
Cook's Court, 106, 108, 109. 
Copeland, 20. 
Copelande, Robert, 319. 
Cordell, Sir W., 230. 
Cork, Lady, 50. 
Cottingham, John, 251. 
Courtenay, Hugh, 48. 
Coutts, 140. 

Coventry, Thomas, 156. 
Cow Lane, 12. 
Cowley, Abraham, 35, 302. 
' Cowpe-on-the-Hoope,' the, 239. 
Crane Court, 86, 87, 88, 329. 
Creswell, Mrs., 69. 
Critz, John de, 75. 
Ci-ockford, 132, 133. 
Cromwell, Henry, 136. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 100, loi, 120, 

136, 222, 251. 
Crooke, Cecily, 200. 
' Cross Keys,' the, 20, 76, 288, 

325- 
Crown Court, 54, 55, iii. 
Crown Office Row, 173-174, 178. 
Crown Tavern, 37, 75, 278. 
Curll, Edmund, 20, 324. 
Currier's Alley, 76. 
Cursitor Street, 105, 106, 107, 108. 



Dacres, Henry, 206. 

Daffy, Mrs., 57. 

Daily Chronicle, the, 18, 328. 

Daily Courant, the, 28, 62, 328. 

Daily News, the, 18, 19, 47, 328. 

Daily Telegraph, the, 18, 19, 77, 

328. 
Dalton, Laurence, 198. 
Davenant Charles, 61, 315. 
Davenant, Lady, 56, 61. 
Davenant, William, 59, 60, 61. 

335 



INDEX 



Davies, Sir John, 163, 165. 

Davison, 52. 

Deborah, Elizabeth, 199. 

Delano, John, 156. 

Delawar, Lad}^ 235. 

Delawar, Lord, 50. 

Denham, 36, 229, 271. 

Djnzic, 44. 

Devil Tavern, 37, 40, 132, 135, 

201, 242-252, 299, 313. 
' Devil's Nook,' the, 72. 
Devonshire, Duke of, 136. 
D'Ewes, SirSymonds, 307. 
' Dial and One Crown,' the, 33. 
Dick's Coffee-House, 251, 252,253, 

264, 314. 
Dickens, Charles, 52, 109, 113, 

138, 176, 177, 281. 
Dickenson, William, 233. 
Discussion Hall, 288. 
D'Israeli, Benjamin, 77. 
D'Israeli, Isaac, 99. 
Ditch Side, 63. 
Dixon, Hepworth, 68. 
Docwra, Thomas, 277. 
Dogwell Court, 52. 
Dolphin Tavern, 279. 
Donne, Dr., 204. 
Donovan, Edward, 24. 
Donyngtone, Thomas de, 73. 
Dorset Court, 20, 55, 56, 60. 
Dorset, Earl of, 231, 235. 
Dorset Gardens, 59, 61, 62. 
Dorset House, 59, 231, 232. 
Douglas, 257. 
Dove, William, 236. 
Drayton, Michael, 193. 
Dring, Thomas, 322. 
Drummond, 140. 
Dryden, 56, 89, 91, 92, 136, 245, 

302, 303, 304, 323. 
Dudley, Lord, 192. 
'Duke of Marlborough's Head,' 

the, 23. 
Duke, T., 191, 193. 
Duke's Theatre, 59, 61, 62. 
Dunstall, 287. 
Dutton, 33. 
Dyer, George, 149, 150, 201. 



' Eagle and Child,' the, 23. 
Eastfield, Sir William, 38. 
336 



Edgar, King, 5. 

Edward i., 4, 48, 97, 146. 

Edward 11., 5, 65, 66, 73, 145, 157. 

Edward iii., 73, 97, 158, 159. 

Edward VI., 18, 50, 68, 154. 

Edward vii., 163. 

Eldon, Lord, 92, 108, 165. 

Eleanor of Aquitaine, 215. 

Elector, Prince, 162. 

Elizabeth, Queen, 7, 10, 25, 38, 

117, 118, 167, 188, 195, 198, 

203, 220, 295. 
Ellenborough, Lord, 186. 
Ellerker, John 153. 
Ellwood, Thomas, 69. 
Elm Court, 174. 
Elm-Tree Court, 187. 
Ely, Bishop of, 151, 152. 
Empson, Sir R., 226. 
Emsted, William, 224. 
Escrick, Lord Howard of, 260. 
Essex Court, 174, 175. 
Essex House, 174. 
Essex, Lord, 50. 
Evans, 76. 

Evefelde, John de, 4. 
Evelyn, John, 11, 15, 103, 127, 

165. 
Everdon, S. de, 219. 
Eversham, William, 228. 
Exchange Coffec-House, 13. 
Eyre, John, 57. 



Fabian, Robert, 115. 

Fabyan, 7. 

' Falcon,' the, 18, 44. 

Falcon Court, 18, 44, 45, 176, 

277. 
Fanshawe, Lady, 136. 
Fanshawe, Sir Richard, 78. 
Faraday, Michael, 57. 
Farendon, Nicholas de, 6. 
Farendon, William de, 6. 
Farr, James, 254, 255. 
Farringdon Market, 28, 75. 
Farringdon Street, 5, 29, 74, 76. 
Felton, 305. 
Fetter Lane, 3, 9, 12, 14, 88, 89, 

90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, lOI, 

109. 
Feversham, Earl of, 187. 
Fevre, Ralph le, 6. 



INDEX 



Field, 53, 178. 

Fielding, Henry, 188, 235, 309. 

' Fig-Tree,' the, 78. 

Fig-Tree Court, no, 175, 176. 

Filby, 54, 172. 

Finett, Sir John, 189. 

Fisher, John, 44. 

Fisher, Thonias, 320. 

Fitz, Richard, 69. 

'Five Bells,' the, 75. 

Flatman, Thomas, 234. 

Fleet Bridge, 22, 27, 28, 29. 

Fleet Bridge Street, i, 3, 22, 25. 

Fleet Market, 29, 74, 108. 

Fleet Stream, i, 3, 25, 26, 27, 

48, 64, 68, 115. 
Flete, John de, 4. 
Fleur-de-Lis Court, 88, 89, 92. 
Flore, Anne, 49. 
Florio, 75. 

Flying Horse Court, 96. 
Ford, Sir Richard, 124. 
Forest, William, 203. 
Forster, John, 222. 
Fortescue, 103, no, 155, 189. 
Foss, Edward, 81. 
Foster, Principal, 149. 
Fountain Court, 76. 
Fountain Tavern, 33. 
Fowler, Thomas, 143. 
Francis i., 102. 
Franklin, John, 98. 
Fraxincto, Gilbert de, 3. 
Friend, Sir John, 126. 
Fuller, Thomas, 236. 

Garden Court, 177, 182, 313. 

Garret, Sir W., 198. 

Garrick, David, 34, 85. 

Garth, 178. 

Gaudcn, John, 244. 

Gay, 27, 33. 

Gentleman' s Magazine, the, 86, 88, 

328. 
• George,' the, 20, 52. 
George Alley, 76. 
George, Prince of Denmark, 136. 
Gerarde, Sir W., 65. 
Gerbier, Sir B., 50, 199. 
Gibbon, Edmund, 218. 
Gibbon, Grinling, 61. 
Gilbert, Sir J., 197. 
Gilliver,^Lawton, 20, 325. 
Y 



Gissing, George, 329. 

Globe Court, 76. 

Globe Tavern, 241, 285-289. 

Godfrey, Sir E. B., 295. 

Golden Bottle Tavern, 21. 

Golden Buck Tavern, 33. 

Golden Lion Tavern, 288. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 54, 57, 78, 
128, 172, 177, 182, 217, 222, 
223, 275, 283, 286, 287, 309, 

313- 
Goodwin, Thomas, 93. 
Gosling, 7, 21, 37, 139, 140, 195. 
Gough Square, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 

85. 95. 310. 
Grange Court, 106. 
Grange Tavern, 106. 
Grant, Samuel, 207. 
Gray, Sir Richard, 48. 
Gray's Inn, 313. 
Green Dragon Tavern, 15, 288. 
Green Ribbon Club, 25, 260. 
Green, William, 58. 
Grey Friars, the, 3, 10. 
Grey, Henry, 50. 
Grey, Lady Jane, 295. 
Greyhound Tavern, 15, 288. 
Griffin Tavern, 11, 131, 221. 
Griffith, William, 18, 44, 221, 318, 

328. 
Grimstone, H., 200. 
Grinsell, Thomas, 203. 
Guilford, Lord Keeper, 165, 174, 

181. 
Gulliver, Lemuel, 92. 
Gull}'-, 106. 
Gunpowder Alley, 76. 
Gupp3^ John, 12. 
Gwyn, Nell, 136, 283. 
Gwynn, John, 129. 
Gyde, Elizabeth, 86. 

Hale, Sir Matthew, 148. 
Halifax, Lord, 220. 
Hamilton, Duke of, 257. 
Hanging Sword Alley, 54, 55. 
Harcourt Buildings, 189. 
Harcourt, Lord Chancellor, iSg. 
Harding Street, 94, 95. 
Hardinge, Agnes, 94. 
Hardwicke, Lord Chancellor, 188. 
Hardwick, P. C, 105. 
Hardy, 296. 

337 



INDEX 



Hare Court, 43, 46, 177, 179, 

187. 253- 
Hare House, 47. 
Hare, Nicholas, 177, 196. 
Harley, M. de, 145, 146. 
Harp Alley, 37, 76. 
Harris, 56, 61, 62. 
Harrison, 147. 
Harrys Tom, 194. 
Harvey, John, 196. 
Harvey, William, 230. 
Hatton, Sir Christopher, 167, 170, 

176. 
' Haunch of Venison,' the, 195. 
Havelock, 165, 166. 
Hawkins, George, 326. 
Hazlitt, William, 47. 
Henry i., 64. 
Henry iii., 197. 
Henry iv., 51. 
Henry viii., 31, 48, 64, 65-102, 

159, 188, 226, 227. 
Herbert, Lord, 199. 
Hercules' Pillars, 227. 
Hercules' Pillars Alley, 45, 228. 
Herfleet's Inn, 105. 
Heriot, James, 143. 
Herrick, Robert, 281. 
Herslet Inn, 104. 
Heyward, 185. 
Heywood, Robert, 7, 230. 
Highley, Samuel, 327. 
Hightrehight, de, 23. 
Hill, Joseph, 42, 106. 
Hind Court, 78. 
Hind, James, 42. 
Hiscock, Robert, 76. 
Hoare, 7, 21, 139, 140, 142, 206, 

273, 276. 
Hobbes, 91. 
Hogarth, 24, 33, 43, 55, 57, 58, 

137, 181, 188, 189, 276. 
' Hole in the Wall,' the, 99, 108. 
Hollingworth, John, 229. 
Holt, Elizabeth, 20. 
' Homer's Head,' the, 20, 326. 
Hone, William, 33. 
Hood, Tom, 281. 
Hook, Theodore, 245. 
Hooker, Richard, 220, 224. 
Hoole, 113. 
Hopkins, Henry, 230. 
Horn Tavern, 32, 279, 280. 
838 



Horner, 177. 

Horspoole, John, 195. 

Horton, Roger, 195, 196. 

Hothersall, H., 232. 

Howard, 68, 79, 237. 

Howell, James, 216. 

Howitt, 300. 

Hunt, Leigh, 50, 150. 

Hutton, R., 197. 

Hyde, Lord Chief Justice, 98, 155. 

Hyde, Sir Nicholas, 165. 

Hydyngham, John de, 164. 

Hynde, Judge, 198. 

Illustrated London News, the, 88. 
Inglefield, Thomas, 154. 
Inner Temple, the, 166-171. 
Inner Temple Lane, 20, 29, 32, 

40-44, 177-184, 311. 
Irweng, 51. 
Isted, Ambrose, 20. 

Jackanapes Lane, 106, 107. 
Jackson, J. H., 319. 
Jacomb, Dr., 231. 
Jaggard, John, 199, 253, 321. 
James i., 10, 27, 30, 51, 53, 
75, III, 118, 133, 159, 188, 

295- 

James 11., 136, 140. 

Jefferies, John, 85. 

Jefferies, Richard, 86. 

Jeffreys, Judge, 171. 

Jekyll, 183. 

Jerrold, Douglas, 281. 

Joe's Coffee-House, 276, 277. 

John of Gaunt, 48. 

Johnson Club, 282. 

Johnson, Dr., 19, 33, 41, 42, 45, 
57, 69, 78, 80, 81-85, 128, 
172, 179, 180, 235, 261, 273, 
275. 277, 281, 305, 309, 310, 
311, 312, 313, 316, 323, 329. 

Johnson, Thomas, 81, 82. 

Johnson's Buildings, 44. 

Johnson's Court, 35, 71, 78-83, 
202, 312,. 

Jones, Inigo, 30, 118, 160. 

Jones, Sir William, 189. 

Jonson, Ben, 22, 47, 97, 100, 
118, 167, 218, 242, 244-250, 
273, 274, 281, 282, 283, 298. 

Judde, 7. 



INDEX 



Katharine, Queen, 65. 

Keeble, 7. 

Kelly, Hugh, 84. 

Kelly, Thomas, 85. 

Kerbye, Charles, 76. 

King, Lord Chief Justice, 155. 

King, Sir John, 57. 

King's Bench Walk, 45, 46, 181, 

183, 184, 186. 
King's Head Court, 76. 
King's Head Tavern, 241, 259, 

260, 261, 296, 321. 
Kit-Kat Club, the, iii, 264, 

265-271, 308. 
Knape, John, 191. 
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 268. 
Knight, John, 328. 
Knight, Thomas, 124. 

Lamb Buildings, 189. 

Lamb, Charles, 41, 43, 44, 45, 
46, 94, 149, 150, 156, 173, 
178-184, 189, 195, 201, 215, 

217, 315. 
Lamb, Mary, 181, 184. 
Lancaster, Thomas, Earl of , 157. 
Langford, William de, 158. 
Langton, 174, 275. 
Layer, Christopher, 127. 
Leach, Dryden, 87, 88. 
Lee, Nat, 302. 
Lee, Sir T., 198. 
Leicester, Lord, 98, 113. 
Lellow, Sir H., 230. 
Lely, Sir Peter, 136. 
Lemon, Mark, 281. 
Lenox, Charlotte, 248, 249. 
Leopold, Prince, 131. 
Leslie, 37. 

L'Estrange, Hamon, 47, 61. 
Levitt, Robert, 69, 82. 
Lincoln, family of, 98. 
Lincoln's Inn, 3, 93, 97, 100, 104. 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, 3, 107, no. 
Lintot, Bernard, 20, 256, 325. 
Lintot, son of Bernard, 42. 
Little Shire Lane, no. 
Littleton, Anne, 217. 
Littleton, Edward, 171, 317. 
Lob's Pound, 70. 
' Lock and Key,' the, SG. 
Locke, 56. 
' London Fen,' 5. 



Lovelace, Colonel, 14. 
Lovelace, Richard, 76, 230, 332. 
Lovell, Sir Thomas, 100. 
' Lumber Troop,' the, 81. 
Lutwich, Sir E., 235. 
Lyndliurst, Lord, 174, 175. 
Lysons, 183. 

Mackay, Dr., 182. 
Mackenzie, John, 176. 
Macklin, 287. 
Mackworth, 143. 
Madox, Dr., 236. 
Madrigal Society, the, 63. 
Magnaville, Geoffrey de, 212. 
Maitland, 57. 
Malcolm, Sarah, 45. 
Mallet, E., 28. 
Manley, Justice, 185. 
Manning, 43, 45, 46, 177, 180, 183. 
Manningham, 165, 221. 
Mansfield Coffee-House, 76. 
Mansfield, John, 182. 
Mareschall, Gilbert, 214. 
Mareschall, William, 213, 214. 
Maria, Henrietta, 136. 
Marlborough, Duchess of, 137,182. 
Marlborough, Duke of, 136. 
Marriot, Richard, 15, 321. 
Marshall, E., 197, 202. 
Marshall, family of, 90. 
Marshall, Joshua, 124, 197, 203. 
Marshall, R., 48. 
Martin, Benjamin, 202. 
Marvell, Andrew, 262. 
Mary, Queen, 38, 66, 116, 178, 

272, 295. 
'Marygold,' the, 21, 133, 134, 

136, 137- 
Maseres, Baron, 45, 183. 
Mason, Daniel, 292. 
Massinger, 47. 
Matthews, Richard, 28. 
Maupas, Henry, 153. 
Mawson, 143. 
Maxey, Thomas, 153. 
May, Hugh, 14. 
Mermaid Tavern, the, 280. 
Meux, Sir Henry, 131. 
Mico, 7. 

Middle Temple, 160-166. 
Middle Temple Lane, 3, 31, 40, 

116, 165, 171, 177, 187, 189. 

339 



INDEX 



Middleton, Sir Hugh, 39. 
Middleton, Tom, 32. 
Middleton, William, 122. 
Millar, Andrew, 323. 
Miller, James, 252. 
Milton, John, 69, 237, 300. 
' Milton's Head,' the, 23O. 
Mitre Court, 45, 188, 276, 277, 

314- 
Mitre Court Buildings, 43, 45, 

46, 183, 184. 
Mitre Tavern, 45, 140, 241, 274- 

277, 280, 313. 
Moliiis, 235. 

Moncrieff, Alexander, 255. 
Monk, General, 307. 
Monk, Principal, 148. 
Monmouth, Duke of, 136. 
Montague, Dr., 221. 
Montague, Sir E., 154, 155. 
Moore, Sir Jonas, 15. 
Moore, Tom, 99, 165. 
Moore, William, 217. 
Moote, Benjamin, 325. 
Moravian Chapel, the, 192. 
Morecroft Court, 85. 
Morland, Sir S., 37, 100, loi. 
Morning Chronicle, the, 113. 
Morrison, Lady, 50. 
Mountfiquit Tower, 67. 
Mudge, Tom, 35. 
'Mug-House,' the, 290, 291. 
Munday, 204. 
Murray, John, 45, 327. 
Murray, J. S., 182, 200. 
Mylne, Robert, 34. 

'Nando's,' 20, 256, 325. 

Nelson, Lord, 295. 

Nevill, family of, 91. 

Nevill, Ralph, 93. 

Neville's Court, 91, 93, 105, 201. 

New Bridge Street, 34, 48. 

New Court, 106. 

New Square, 106, 112. 

New Street, 76, 95, 96, 97, 109. 

New Street Square, 95. 

News Exchange, the, 72. 

Newton, Sir Adam, 199. 

Nicholls, Samuel, 190. 

Nichols, John, 236. 

Noel, Sir Martin, 261. 

Norman, Philip, 32, 33, 146, 149. 

340 



North Briton, the, 88. 

North, Lord Keeper, 98, 136, 151, 

296. 
North, Roger, 197, 204. 
Norwich, Robert, 154. 

Oates, Titus, 204. 
O'Connell, 292. 
Offley, Sir T., 198. 
Oglethorpe, Dr., 172, 198. 
Old Ship Tavern, 287. 
Oldbourne Hall, 74. 
Orleans, Duchess of, 136. 
Orrcr}^ Countess of, 235. 
Otway, 52, 91, 92, 218, 303, 304. 
Overton, 33. 
Owen, Thankful, 93. 
Oxburg, Colonel, 127. 

Page, Baron, 155. 

Paine, Tom, 92. 

Pakeman, Daniel), 255. 

Palmer, 236. 

Paltock, Robert, 150. 

Pandemonium Club, the, 250. 

Paper Buildings, 13, 147, 181, 
184, 186. 

Papworth, 238. 

Park, Judge, 106. 

Parker, Sir John, 50. 

Parkins, 238. 

Parr, Dr., 106. 

Paston, Sir John, 8. 

Paulet, Sir Amias, 160, 297. 

Paulet, Sir John, 31. 

Payne, John, 165. 

Peacock, Bampton, & Mans- 
field, firm of, 57. 

Peake, Sir William, 169. 

Pearce, Sir William, 190. 

Peele's Coffee-House, 261. 

Pellatt, Sir Henry, 149. 

Pennethorne, Sir James, loi. 

Penny Magazine, the, 328. 

Pepys, Samuel, 12, 60, 99, 134, 
136, 169, 204, 221, 231, 248, 
258, 277, 278, 279, 308. 

Pepys, Thomas, 231. 

Percy, Bishop, 113, 279. 

Perkins, Jacob, 78. 

Perkins, Sir William, 126. 

Perry, James, 113. 

Peterborough Court, 77. 



INDEX 



Petyt, William, 216, 222. 

Philip, George, 327. 

Philip, King of Spain, 38, 117, 

295- , . 

Philips, Catherine, 307. 
Phillips, Sir Richard, 34. 
Pickering, 99- 

Pickett, Alderman, 129, 130. 
Pierson, Peter, 217, 231. 
Pike, Francis, 50. 
Pinchbeck, Christopher, 35, 202. 
Pincknej', Henry, 139- 
Pinkerton, Miss, 106. 
Plantag;net, William, 215, 219. 
Plough Court, 106. 
Plough Inn, 106. 

Plowden Buildings, 189. 

Plowden, Edmund, 160, 165, 216. 

Pollard, Sir Lewis, 154- 

Pope, Alexander, 27, 68, 88, 103, 
no, 182, 189, 281, 325. 

' Pope's Head,' the, 20, 99, 259, 
261, 312. 

Popham, Sir John, 120. 

' Poppinjaye,' the, 72. 

Poppinjaye Alley, 72. 

Porson, 175. 

Portman, Sir W., 198. 

Portugal Row, 60. 

Portugal Street, 105. 

Powel, Thomas, 51. 

Powell, Sir W., 240. 

Powell's Puppet Show, 58. 

Powys, Justice, 155. 

Praed, Mackworth, 32, 143, 144. 

172. 
Pratt, Lord Chief Justice, I55- 

Price, 7. 

Pridden, John, 235. 

Prideaux, John, 168. 

• Prince's Arms,' the, 31. 

Pump Court, 186, 187, 188, 309 

Punch, 18, 47, 52, 63, 88, 329, 330 

Purcell, 223. 

Purdon, Edward, 287. 

Pynson, Richard, 319. 320. 

Queen's Head Tavern, 308. 
Queensberry, Duchess of, 257. 

Rackstraw, 24. 

Racquet Court, 72. 

Rainbow Tavern, 20, 253-257. 



Raleigh, Sir Walter, 165. 

Ram Alley, 46, 47, 274, 279. 

Ram Tavern, 47. 

Randolph, 247. 

Rawlinson, Dr., 128. 

Read, Robert, 58 

Read's Coffee-House, 290. 

Record Office, loi. 

Red Lion Court, 85, 86, 328. 

Red Lion Tavern, 34, 85, 288. 

Redman, Robert, 319.? 

Reed, 33. 

Reeve, Sir E., 98. 

Reeves & Turner, firm of, I33- 

Rennell, Thomas, 190. 

Reynolds, 84, 172, 182. 

Rhymers Club, 282. 

Richardson, Samuel, 56, 57. 84, 

235, 309, 313- ^ ^ ^ 
Richmond, Duke of, 136, 146. 
Rickman, 46, 184. 
Ridlev, Bishop, 66. 
Robiii Hood Club, 286. 
Robinson, Crabb, 150. 
Robinson, Jacob, 20, 312* 
Robinson, Thomas, 190, 216. 
Rogers, John, 135. 182. 
Rogers, Samuel, 186. 
Rogue's Lane, no, in. 
Rolls Chapel, 97. lo^' ^°3- 
Rolls House, loi, 102, 104. 
Romaine, William, 205. 
Roman Bath, the, 2. 
Romilly, Isaac, 236. 
Rooper, John, 236. 
Roper, Abel, 322. 
Ros, Lord, 215. 
Ros, Robert de, 214. 
Rose and Crown Court, 75. 76. 
' Rose Garland,' the, 20. 
Rose, Samuel 99. 
Rose Tavern, 288. 
Roubiliac, 84. 
Rudhall, A., 237. 
' Rummer,' the, 23. 
Rupert, Prince, 136. 
Rutland, Earl of, 136. 

Sackville, Richard, 229. 
Sackville, Thomas, 50, 230. 
St. Andrew's Church, 77. 
St. Bride's Avenue, 63, 227, 237, 
238. 

341 



INDEX 



St. Bride's Church, 22, 63, 191, 

205, 225-238, 300. 
St. Bride's Lane, 63, 71. 
St. Bride's Street, 76. 
St. Bridget's Church, 63, 73. 
St. Dunstan's Church, 5, 10, 11, 

14, 15, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 35, 

44, 81, 90, 96, 108, 113, 142, 

145, 148, 157, 191-207. 
St. Dunstan's Court, 85, 96. 
St. Katherine's Chapel, 193, 230. 
St. Sepulchre's Church, 188. 
Sala, G. A., 285, 329. 
Salisbury Court, 30, 55, 56, 57, 

59, 60, 61,143,290,291, 292,310. 
Salisbury' Square, 55, 56, 57, 58, 

310, 313, 328. 
Salmon, Mrs., 24, 31, 32, 144, 280. 
Saltonstall, Lady, 91. 
Sampson, Richard, 305. 
Sandford, Francis, 235. 
Sandford, Sir Richard, 306. 
Sanquhar, Lord, 51. 
Scarlett, Sir James, 174. 
Schrimpshaw, 143. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 47, 150. 
Scott, Walter, 77. 
Sedley, Sir Charles, 112. 
Seele, "Thomas, 76. 
Selden, John, 50, 147, 171, 185, 

220, 222. 
Semer, Edward, 230. 
Serjeants' Inn, 47, 98, 151-156. 
Serle, Henry, 112. 
Serle's Place, no, 112. 
Sevenoaks, Sir W., 239. 
Shadwell, 47, 50, 52, 56, 62, 68, 

165, 182, 302. 
Shakespeare, William, 161, 274, 

298. 
Shaw, James, 205. 
Shaw, John, 95. 
Shaw & Sons, firm of, 326. 
Shenstone, 257. 
Sheppard, Jack, 272. 
Sherlock, Dr., 205, 224. 
Sherlock, Thomas, 190. 
Sherlock, William, 189, 190. 
Shire Lane, 23, 99, no, 112, 113, 

261, 264, 272, 308. 
Shirley, 50, 299. 
Shoe Lane, 4, 9, 12, 14, 23, 72-77, 

89, 90, 94. 95. 314- 
342 



Siddons, Mrs., 79. 

Simonds, Thomas, 108. 

Smirke, Sir Robert, 132, 177, 1S2, 

210, 219, 222. 
Smirke, Sydney, 174, 185. 
Smith, 35, 62, 80. 
Smith, Father, 223. 
Smithwick, John, 20. 
Soakers Club, the, 282. 
Soane, Sir John, 149. 
Somers, Lord, 100, 165. 
Somerset, Duke of, 228. 
Somerset, F., 199. 
Southerne, 165. 
Southcy, Robert, 184. 
Speake, Sir Thomas, 198. 
Spenser, Edmund, 299. 
Spurgeon, C. H., 94. 
Sjiurgcon, John, 93. 
Staines, Sir W., 233. 
Standard, the, 18, 328. 
Starkey, John, 322. 
Starling, Sir Samuel, 124. 
Steele, Sir Richard, 248, 252, 254, 

268, 269, 281, 308. 
Stephens, Joel, 253. 
Stillingfleet, Bishop, 136. 
Stone Cutters' Street, 76. 
Stone, Nicholas, 197. 
Stowell, Lord, 165, 275, 276. 
Strafford, Lord, 91, 98. 
Stubbi, Hugh de, 4. 
Stubbi, Sarra, 4. 
Summers, William, 9. 
Sun Tavern, 99, 243, 272. 
Suter, A. B., 205. 
Swan Tavern, 324. 
Swift, 27. 
Sylvester, 282. 
Symond's Inn, 108, 109. 

Talbot, Margaret, 196. 
Talfourd, 166. 

Tanfield Court, 45, 188, 190. 
Tanfield, Sir Laurence, 188. 
Tatler's Club, the, 264. 
Tatum, John, 57. 
Taylor, Henry, 106. 
Taylor, James, 78. 
Taylor, Jeremy, 307. 
Taylor, John, 299. 
Taylor, Richard, 86, 104. 
Taylor, Tom, 174, 281. 



INDEX 



Temple, the, 13, 29, 156-159. 
Temple Bar, 5, 6, 11, 12, 14, 

18, 29, 40, no, 113, 114- 

144. 
Temple Bridge, 164. 
Temple Buildings, 21. 
Temple Church, 157, 190, 191, 

207-255. 
Temple Gardens, 163, 164, 1G5, 

184, 298. 
Tennis Court, 60. 
Tennyson, Lord, 257, 258, 281. 
Thackeray, W. M., 172, 173, 174, 

178, 281. 
Theobald's Park, 114, 131. 
Thimblethorpe, Mrs., 8. 
Thomas, Elizabeth, 234. 
Thomas, John, 236. 
Thompson, 58, 204. 
Thornbury, 187. 
Three Kings Court, 23. 
Three-Legged Alley, 95. 
' Three Squirrels,' the, 21, 37, 

139- 
Throckmorton, family of, 98. 
Thurloe, Lord, 100, loi, 176, 217, 

257- 
Tillotson, Bishop, 98. 
Tompion, Thomas, 33, 54. 
Toms, 192. 
Tonbridge, 7. 
Tonson, Jacob, 20, 99, 267, 268, 

271, 323- 
Tonson, Richard, 271. 
Tooke, Benjamin, 325. 
Took, Home, 35. 
Toole, 273. 
Toryntone, D. de, 17. 
Tottill, 321, 326. 
Tottill, Jane, 199, 200. 
Tottill, Richard, 18. 
Tottill, R., 199, 200, 253. 
Tournour, John, 73. 
Tracy, Justice, 155. 
Traveller, the, 88. 
Travers, Walter, 220. 
Tresham, Lady, 307. 
Trevor, Sir John, 98. 
Trevor, Sir Thomas, 155. 
Trinity Church, 85, 95. 
Triple Tun Tavern, 285. 
Trobe, C. I. la, 93. 
Trout, Van der, 37. 



Trumpet Tavern, in, 262, 263, 

264. 
Turner, Arthur, 216. 
Turner, Edward, 216. 
' Twelve Bells,' the, 63. 
Twiss, Horace, 99. 
Twyford, H., 189. 
Tyler, Le Ireis le, 4. 
Tyler, Wat, 5, 115, 219, 2934 
Tjmdale, William, 204. 

Ulsthorpe, John, 228. 
Underbill, 5 

Underwood, George, 327. 
Underwood, Thomas, 327. 

Valence, Aymer de, 157. 
Vanbrugh, 264, 268, 269. 
Vaughan, C. J., 190. 
Vaughan, Dr., 224. 
Venor, William, 225. 
Verdun, John de, 4. 
Villiers, George, 50. 
Vine Court, 187, 189. 
Viner, Sir Robert, 2J5. 

Wadlow, John, 243. 

Wadlow, Simon, 199, 206, 242, 

243- 
Waithman, Alderman, 7, 29, 235. 
Walker, Matthias, 322, 
Waller, R., 87. 
Wallpole, Serjeant, 198. 
Walmsley, James, 9. 
Walpole, 128, 136, 188, 265, 266. 
Walton, Izaak, 36, 76, 98, 201, 

202, 300, 301. 
Walworth, James, 38. 
Warburton, 88, 113. 
Ward, 37, 55, 56. 
Warde, Colonel, 51. 
Water Lane, 53, 54, 55, 194. 
Waterman, Sir George, 124. 
Watts, George, 190. 
Wednesday Club, the, 286. 
Wellington, Duke of, 295. 
Wells, Dr. W. C, 235. 
Wentworth, Thomas, 199. 
Wesley, John, 92, 94. 
West, Edward, 192, 202. 
Wheeler, Sir Charles, 14. 
White, Benjamin, 326. 
White, Dr. Thomas, 204. 

343 



INDEX 



'White Bear,' the, 63/ 
'White Horse,' the, 92. 
White Lion Court, 55. 
Whitefield, 92. 
Whitefriars, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 58 

60, 62. 
Whitefriars Street, 47, 53. 
Whitehead, Richard, 75. 
Whitelocke, B., 56, 307. 
Wicks, Thomas, 72. 
Wigan, John, 228. 
Wilcox, 85. 
Wilkes, 7, 29, 88, 126. 
Wilkins, Dr., 221. 
Willemont, Thomas, 206. 
William x., 6. 
William iii., 126, 136. 
William iv., 58. 
Williams, Mrs., 70, 82, 83. 
Willis, Sir R., loi. 
Will's Coffee-House, 251, 252. 
Wine Office Court, 78, 281, 283, 

284, 313. 



Winter, Captain, 170. 

Wither, George, 299. 

Wolane, David de, 207. 

Wolsey, Cardinal, 31, 32, 65, 98, 
226. 

Wood, H. G., 190. 

Woodfall, 287, 326. 

Woodmongers' Wharf, 63. 

Worcester, Bishop of, 50. 

Worde, W. de, 18, 44, 230, 318. 

Wotton, Sir Henry, 77. 

Wotton, Thomas, 326. 

Wren, Sir Christopher, 10, 11, 15, 
22, 29, 61, 87, 122, 123, 124, 160, 
181, 205, 225, 232, 233, 234, 237. 

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 116. 

Wycherley,''i65. 



Yeates Court, 106. 
York Hotel, 34. 
York House, 298. 
Young, Dr. John, 102. 



Printed by Morrison & Gibb Limited, Edinburgh 




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